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THE    FUR   TRADE    OF   AMERICA 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NKW  YORK  •    BOSTON  •   CHICAGO  •   DALLAS 
ATLANTA  •    SAN  FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  Limited 

LONDON  •    BOMBAY  •    CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  Ltd. 

TORONTO 


-J5' 


American  Museum  of  Natural  History. 


THE    FUR   TRADE   OF 
AMERICA 


BY 


AGNES   C.    LAUT 

"pathfinders  of  the  west,"  "vikings  of  the 
pacific,"  "conquest  of  great  north- 
west," "lords  of  north,"  etc. 


Netogorfe 

THE   MACMILLAN   COMPANY 
1921 

All  rights  reserved 


Copyright,  193  i, 
Bv  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.     Published  February,  1921. 


Nodsoat)  IfixtM 

J.  8.  Gushing  Co.  —Berwick  &  Smith  0«. 

Norwood,  Ma&s.,  U.S.A. 


College 
Library 


qq44 


FOREWORD 


Is  fur  trading  founded  on  cruelty  ? 

For  the  past  few  years,  there  has  been  a  campaign  waged  in 
the  United  States,  which  almost  charges  any  one  wearing  a  piece 
of  fur  with  murder. 

When  that  question  is  asked  me,  I  feel  Hke  answering  by  asking 
another  set  of  questions  —  Is  child  birth  cruel  ?  Is  any  type  of 
birth  for  animals  or  humans  painless  ?  Should  we  abolish  all  birth 
and  strive  for  the  Nirvana  of  Nothingness  because  all  birth  is  at- 
tended with  even  greater  pain  than  death  ?  Should  we  cease  to 
fight  for  right  and  award  honor  to  the  heroes  of  war,  because  the 
triumph  of  right  must  necessarily  entail  death  to  those  who  fight 
for  wrong  ? 

But  I  do  not  hurl  back  this  bombardment  of  counter  questions ; 
for  I  realize  they  are  founded  on  misconceptions ;  and  I  love  the 
creatures  of  the  wilds  —  feathered  and  furred  —  with  a  passion 
that  has  taken  me  to  the  open  every  year  of  my  life  and  keeps  me 
to-day  by  preference  a  resident  of  the  country  rather  than  a  deni- 
zen of  the  town.  As  a  girl,  I  learned  to  shoot.  As  a  woman,  I 
have  never  fired  a  shot  at  a  wild  creature,  except  in  the  air  to  scare 
husky  dogs  away  from  molesting  the  ham  and  bacon  stored  in  our 
camp  kit ;  and  If  I  hadn't,  they  would  have  eaten  our  boots.  The 
people,  who  have  accused  the  fur  trade  of  being  founded  on  cruelty, 
I  notice  eat  game  birds  and  ham  and  bacon  and  roast  beef  and  fresh 
lamb  ;  but  that  inconsistency  apart,  let  us  face  the  question  without 
any  side  issues  or  inconsistencies  —  Is  fur  trading  founded  on 
cruelty  ? 

And  I  answer  unhesitatingly  —  It  is  not.  It  is  not  because 
the  very  existence  of  the  fur  trade  depends  on  protecting  wild  life 


962173 


vi  FOREWORD 

and  conserving  the  fur  bearers.  I  am  not  talking  of  game  hogs, 
who  shoot  for  the  love  of  slaughter,  or  lust  of  killing.  I  am  speak- 
ing of  the  fur  trade  as  it  is  operated  to-day  in  the  three  greatest 
fur  preserves  of  the  world  —  Alaska  and  the  United  States,  Northern 
Canada  and  Siberia. 

You  have  to  go  to  the  wilds  and  go  only  once  to  realize  that 
natural  life  is  cruder  by  far  than  the  most  careless,  thoughtless 
fur  hunter. 

In  the  first  place,  there  is  no  such  thing  as  a  natural  death  in 
the  wilds. 

The  rabbits  fall  victims  to  the  weasel,  to  the  wolf,  to  the  bear, 
to  the  lynx,  to  the  marten;  and  if  they  didn't  they  would  and  do 
multiply  with  such  terrific  rapidity  they  would  and  do  fall  victims 
to  a  pest  of  disease  once  in  six  or  seven  years.  Otherwise,  they 
would  do  what  they  have  done  in  Australia  —  become  so  prolific 
they  perish  of  starvation. 

Each  creature  in  the  animal  world  preys  on  the  creature  one  de- 
gree smaller  or  weaker  than  itself.  That  failing,  they  eat  their 
own  young  Hke  rats,  or  disembowel  their  mates  as  the  wolves  and 
minks  do. 

There  is  next  the  consideration  of  the  superfluous  male.  Some 
animals  Hke  the  fox  mate  for  Ufe  and  are  monogamous;  but  the 
most  of  the  fur  bearers  fight  for  a  harem ;  and  in  that  fight,  the 
young  are  killed  and  torn,  the  mothers  are  injured,  and  the  "bache- 
lors" being  the  stronger,  left  in  the  majority  to  prey  on  one  another. 
Seal  life  is  one  of  the  most  terrible  examples  of  this.  Bad  as  the 
cruelties  of  the  poachers  were  —  which  have  been  stopped  in  order 
to  conserve  fur  life  —  they  never  caused  the  loss  of  life  among  seals 
that  fights  for  the  harem  caused  every  spring  in  pup  life  and  in- 
juries to  the  mothers.  The  story  of  this  will  be  found  in  the  chap- 
ter on  seals. 

Now  the  fur  trader's  prosperity  being  dependent  on  the  con- 
tinuance of  fur  life,  his  buyer  will  buy  only  furs  (i)  taken  prime, 
that  is,  taken  in  the  short  season  of  two  or  three  months,  when  the 


FOREWORD  vii 

fur  is  perfect,  when  the  mothers  are  not  bearing  young,  and  when 
the  young  are  full  grown ;  (2)  taken  by  such  forms  of  trapping  as 
do  not  fever  the  animal  with  needless  pain;  for  a  fevered  animal 
turns  bluish  in  its  skin ;  and  a  bluish  skin  sheds  its  hairs  just  as  a 
fevered  human  patient  loses  his  hair.  Hunting  with  dogs  is  dis- 
couraged and  in  many  fur  districts  prohibited  by  law.  Poisoned 
bait  is  also  being  prohibited ;  for  fear  a  mother  with  young  should 
get  it.  The  long  range  gun  or  rifle  is  a  less  painful  death  than  to 
be  slowly  eaten  by  a  wolf,  or  to  have  the  blood  sucked  out  alive  by 
a  mink  or  a  marten  ;  but  the  present  tendency  is  to  use  only  the  rifle 
for  such  big  dangerous  game  as  wolf  or  bear;  and  use  box  traps, 
or  deadfall,  which  kills  instantly,  for  fox,  fisher,  marten.  Game 
wardens  supervise  the  opening  of  the  box  traps.  If  the 
prisoner  is  a  lady,  the  tail  is  scissored  in  a  ring  and  she  is  let  go; 
and  if  any  trapper  sends  through  the  mails,  or  tries  to  sell  a  pelt 
so  scissored,  his  furs  are  subject  to  confiscation  and  he  to  a  fine  of 
$500.  A  young  fox  caught  is  treated  in  the  same  way.  So  is  a 
fox  whose  fur  would  not  bring  a  good  price.  He  is  given  another 
year  to  grow.  If  the  superfluous  males  were  not  taken,  they  would 
fight  among  themselves,  as  the  story  of  blue  and  white  Arctic  fox 
tells  in  full. 

It  was  not  the  fur  trade  exterminated  the  buffalo.  It  was 
the  barb  wire  fence  of  the  settlers ;  and  it  was  the  fur  trade  saved 
the  buffalo  from  total  extermination  and  brought  it  back,  as  beaver 
have  also  been  brought  back,  and  Alaska  Seal.  For  the  exter- 
mination of  the  Sea  Otter,  I  have  no  excuses  to  offer.  If  the  fur 
trade  had  had  command  of  the  Sea  Otter  haunts,  the  Sea  Otter  to- 
day would  be  restored  as  the  Alaska  Seal  is.  What  exterminated 
the  Sea  Otter  was  a  race  of  Aleutian  Indians  crazed  with  Russian 
vodka;  and  that  crime  was  perpetrated  when  the  fur  trade  was 
in  its  infancy  and  in  the  hands  of  savage  criminals. 

But  the  greatest  triumph  of  the  modern  fur  trade  is  in  fur  farm- 
ing, as  the  American  Government  has  carried  it  out  in  Alaska  Seal 
and  blue  fox,  and  Canadian  ranchers  in  Prince  Edward  Island.     In 


vlii  FOREWORD 

ten  years  more  than  looo  fur  ranches  have  sprung  up  in  Canada 
and  the  United  States ;  and  this  is  only  the  beginning  of  a  movement 
destined  to  transform  the  fur  trade  and  do  for  it  what  domestic  care 
has  done  for  the  race  horse,  or  the  pure  blood  Holstein.  Pure  blood, 
registered  silver  fox  fur  bearers  to-day  sell  for  from  $10,000  to  $35,000 
a  pair ;  and  when  each  pup  may  yield  a  pelt  worth  $1200  to  $2000,  it 
doesn't  need  telling  that  the  pups  get  the  care  of  millionnaire  babies  ; 
and  the  greater  the  care,  the  finer  the  fur  and  the  higher  the  price. 

But  why  kill  these  pups  at  all  ? 

Read  the  story  of  the  fox  if  you  want  to  know !  Because  of 
the  "superfluous  male"  and  his  ardent  desire  to  scratch  the  eyes 
out  of  a  rival  and  eat  his  entrails. 

But  how  about  the  best  Persian  lamb  from  unborn  kids  ?  That 
charge  is  a  plain  unvarnished  lie.  Fur  farms  are  to-day  supplying 
the  fur  trade  with  the  lamb  skins ;  and  as  I  was  penning  these  words 
was  handed  to  me  a  set  of  Dr.  Young's  pictures  of  his  famous  kara- 
kul ranches  in  California.  Can  you  conceive  of  any  fur  farmer, 
who  has  imported  ewes  and  rams  from  Bokhara  at  a  cost  of  thousands 
and  can  resell  his  breeding  stock  at  from  $500  to  $10,000  a  pair, 
killing  "the  goose  that  lays  the  golden  egg"  ?  If  so,  where  would 
the  lambs  for  next  year's  supply  come  from .''  The  charge  is  too 
ridiculous  to  require  refutation.  When  lambs  are  born  prematurely, 
which  happens  in  the  best  regulated  families,  the  pelt  is  saved,  of 
course,  which  is  the  sole  ground  for  the  charge. 

The  chapters  of  this  volume  consist  in  part  of  articles,  which 
have  from  time  to  time  in  the  last  ten  years  appeared  in  magazines, 
to  which  I  am  indebted  for  permission  to  use  with  such  corrections 
and  additions  as  the  changes  in  the  trade  necessitated. 

I  emphasize  the  word  "corrections";  for  figures  that  were 
correct  in  the  fur  trade  even  four  years  ago  are  obsolete  to-day. 
In  no  American  industry  has  the  pace  gone  so  fast,  and  shifted  so 
completely.  The  War  hastened  but  did  not  cause  this.  It  was 
inevitable  that  America  —  the  biggest  buyer  of  raw  furs  in  the 
world  —  would  ultimately  become  the  market  centre  of  the  fur 


FOREWORD  ix 

world ;  so  we  witness  fur  auctions  held  three  times  a  year  in  Amer- 
ican centres  —  Montreal,  New  York,  St.  Louis  —  whose  aggre- 
gate exceeds  the  famous  fur  auctions  of  London.  It  was  inevitable 
that  America  would  some  day  stop  shipping  her  raw  furs  to  London 
and  Germany  to  be  dressed  and  dyed  and  manufactured  —  would 
some  day  stop  re-importing  her  own  furs  at  enhanced  prices,  and 
would  take  over  the  selling,  dressing  and  dyeing  and  manufacturing 
of  her  own  raw  products. 

The  War  practically  stopped  the  dye  industry  in  Europe;  and 
Americans  and  Canadians  were  not  slow  to  transfer  that  dye  in- 
dustry to  this  continent.  Perfections  in  dye  processes,  that  read 
like  miracles,  followed  faster  than  manufacturers  could  erect  works 
and  train  the  highly  specialized  workers  needed  for  the  most  highly 
specialized  and  highly  technical  industry  in  the  world.  This  page 
of  the  history  of  the  modern  fur  trade  reads  as  romantically  as  any 
story  of  the  hunter  on  the  open  field. 

When  the  American  Government  took  over  Alaska  SeaUng, 
sales  were  held  in  St.  Louis.  That  was  the  beginning  of  the  great 
sales  on  this  continent.  When  the  War  interrupted  shipment  of 
fur  consignments  from  Asia  to  London  and  Germany,  they  began 
coming  to  this  continent  in  huge  volume  through  Vancouver,  San 
Francisco  and  Seattle.  Money  was  plentiful  in  America.  It  was 
scarce  in  Europe.  The  trade  here  called  for  furs.  American  buyers 
began  scouting  for  raw  fur  markets  of  Asia,  South  America,  Canada, 
even  war-torn  Europe.  They  paid  In  many  cases  foolishly  high 
prices.  The  fashion  of  summer  furs  came  in  a  veritable  craze. 
The  market  became  a  maw  that  could  not  be  satiated ;  and  all 
this  swelled  the  furs  pouring  Into  the  new  sales  centres  of  this  coun- 
try. The  fur  trade  doubled,  then  quadrupled.  Prices  jumped 
and  jumped  yet  again  —  in  one  case  from  QOff  to  $90  a  skin  in  six 
years.  In  another  case  from  10^  to  $y  a  skin,  in  yet  another  from 
$200  to  ^1800  a  skin.  Just  at  this  conjunction  of  the  stars  came 
the  spectacular  successes  in  fur  farming  —  silver  fox,  Persian  lamb, 
minkeries.     Alaska  Seal,  Beavers,  Buffalo  —  which  had  been  al- 


X  FOREWORD 

most  exterminated  under  reckless  methods  —  came  back  to  a 
plethora  of  supplies ;  but  still  the  supplies  could  not  satisfy  the  de- 
mands for  furs.  People  were  buying  furs  who  had  never  bought 
or  worn  furs  before;  and  new  dye  processes  were  placing  good 
furs  within  the  reach  of  moderate  means  in  a  way  new  to  the 
trade. 

By  the  time  the  War  was  over,  America  had  taken  over  at  least 
the  American  part  of  the  world  fur  trade  ;  and  hundreds  of  thou- 
sands of  skilled  workmen  were  employed  in  the  industry,  where  only 
hundreds  had  been  employed  before. 

This  story  Is  told  in  Part  I  of  this  volume. 

It  was  also  Inevitable  when  prices  began  to  ascend  with  Hght- 
ning  swiftness  that  shoestring  gamblers  should  jump  in  the  new 
game ;  but  the  game  is  too  chancy  and  technical  for  gamblers, 
who  bought  reckless  of  fashions  or  quality  on  the  hunting  field ; 
and  these  gentry  will  be  shortly  shaken  out  of  the  fur  trade,  richer 
in  experience  of  what  Is  prime  fur  and  what  isn't,  but  poorer  in 
money ;  and  the  fur  trade  will  settle  down  to  normal  progress  in 
the  hands  of  experienced  men. 

The  fur  trade  Is  in  the  shaking-down  process  in  America  now; 
but  It  is  In  America  to  stay,  however  prices  may  be  slashed  and 
profits  sacrificed  In  Europe  to  get  the  great  world  trade  back. 

Part  II  consists  of  the  Story  of  the  Trapper  Afield,  whose  habi- 
tat I  know  almost  as  well  as  I  do  my  own  garden,  from  travel  from 
Labrador  to  the  Arctic  Circle  and  life  on  the  fur  field,  when  a  child. 

An  Appendix  gives  the  fur  laws  of  all  the  States  and  all  the 
Canadian  Provinces,  all  of  which  are  now  wakening  up  to  the  value 
of  fur  as  a  national  asset.  Only  one  set  of  figures  need  be  given  to 
affirm  such  values.  Alaska  cost  the  United  States  $7,200,000  in 
1867.     Up  to  19 1 8,  Alaska  had  exported  $80,000,000  of  furs. 

And   again,   I   emphasize  the  word   "corrections." 

Though  I  have  written  the  technical  part  of  this  volume  under 
the  tutelage  of  such  authorities  as  Mr.  White  of  the  Canadian  Con- 
servation Committee;  under  such  authorities  on  the  field  as  Hud- 


FOREWORD  xi 

son's  Bay  men,  Colonel  Cornwall,  the  free  trader  of  Edmonton, 
Revillons  of  Paris;  such  buyers  as  Gottlieb,  or  Funstens  of  St. 
Louis,  and  a  dozen  others ;  the  dye  chapters  practically  in  some  of 
the  big  dye  works ;  though  I  have  consulted  such  authorities  as 
Hornaday  on  natural  life,  and  Elliot  on  seals,  and  followed  Brass 
as  to  totals,  and  checked  Brass'  totals  with  the  sales  record  of  Lon- 
don fur  brokers  for  a  hundred  years  ;  and  though  I  spent  six  months 
going  over  line  by  line  all  the  Minutes  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Com- 
pany from  1 87 1  — only  the  most  ignorant  quack  would  aver  that 
the  fur  figures  available  to-day  could  be  correct. 

The  reason  for  this  is  self-evident.  When  prices  drop,  or  the 
whim  of  fashion  shifts,  furs  shipped  this  year  may  be  withheld  from 
the  market  and  not  sold  for  four  years,  when  they  will  be  sold  as 
the  output  of  that  year;  and  the  practice  works  the  other  way  as 
well.  When  prices  jump,  furs  stored  for  years  come  out  of  storage 
and  are  sold.  There  is  no  way  of  checking  what  furs  come  from 
what  centres.  Undressed  furs  are  free  of  duty  as  they  should  be. 
The  trapper  may  post  them  from  Athabasca  to  St.  Louis,  or  from 
Wisconsin  to  Montreal.  Northern  furs  always  sell  at  highest  prices, 
other  things  being  equal.  A  little  local  buyer,  or  agent,  may  post 
those  furs  so  received  by  mail  as  from  one  trapping  field  when  they 
are  from  another ;  and  buyers  may  declare  they  know  a  skin's  habi- 
tat from  a  life  experience  in  buying.  They  may  In  many  cases ; 
but  only  this  year,  it  was  found  12  million  pounds  of  rabbit  from 
Australia  were  sold  as  Canadian,  when  they  had  come  in  by  Van- 
couver. I  defy  you  to  tell  an  Alaskan  mink  from  a  British  Colum- 
bia mink,  or  a  Prince  Edward  Island  silver  fox  from  a  Labrador  or 
Athabasca  one.  Game  laws,  wardens'  stamps,  breeders'  trade 
marks  are  correcting  all  this ;  but  to  the  present,  the  confusion  dis- 
counts any  dependence  on  figures. 

Also  the  shift  of  animal  life  defies  scientific  tabulation.  Ten 
years  ago,  I  prepared  a  fur-trade  map  on  America  for  a  leading 
magazine.  We  made  It  as  accurate  as  it  could  be  made  from  Bio- 
logical Reports  from  Washington  and  Government  Reports  and 


xii  FOREWORD 

Hudson's  Bay  Company  Reports  on  Canada.  It  has  been  copied 
and  re-copied,  stolen  and  re-stolen ;  and  yet  to-day,  owing  to  the 
increase  of  animal  life  in  some  sections,  the  extermination  in  other 
sections,  it  is  no  longer  correct.  The  map  I  present  to-day  has  been 
revised  and  to  be  correct,  will  have  to  be  re-revised  again  to-morrow. 

And  even  the  most  experienced  naturalists  disagree,  as  you  will 
see  if  you  follow  Coues  and  Hornaday,  or  Dr.  Young  on  Persian 
Lamb  and  the  Biological  Reports  of  the  U.  S.  Government.  I  had 
a  funny  experience  of  this,  when  I  first  told  the  Story  of  the  Trapper 
years   ago.     I   met  a  lifelong  independent  dealer  on  Peace  River. 

"Say,"  he  said,  "you  are  dead  wrong.  Whoever  put  that  fake 
over  on  you  about  ermine  t  Trappers  never  in  all  time  caught  an 
ermine  by  smearing  an  axe  with  grease." 

I  had  the  story  from  a  chief  factor  born  on  MacKenzie  River, 
and  from  his  daughter,  who  played  with  Indian  children  on  Mac- 
Kenzie River.  I  think  I  told  it  first  in  the  Youth^s  Companion  and 
later  in  Outing.  We  fought  it  out  and  parted  good  friends,  but  in 
revising  this  book,  I  had  decided  to  take  that  paragraph  out  as 
doubtful,  when  I  met  my  same  friend. 

"Say,"  he  said,  "do  you  know  those  people  were  right.?     I  saw 

the  Indians'  kids  doing  that  very  thing  last  winter  down ,"  he 

mentioned  some  MacKenzie  River  point  I  have  forgotten. 

And  so  while  I  wish  to  express  my  deep  gratitude  to  all  helpers 
and  informants  of  facts,  I  wish  to  take  on  my  own  shoulders  any  re- 
sponsibility for  inaccuracies,  knowing  well  the  older  I  grow  how  little 
we  all  know  of  the  secrets  of  animal  life  and  fur-hearing  denizens  of 
the  wilds.  Only  the  study-chair  naturalist  has  a  monopoly  to  abso- 
lute accuracy  in  knowledge  of  the  fur  bearer's  life;  and  I  have 
not  written  this  volume  as  either  a  naturaHst,  or  a  fur  trader,  but 
only  a  passionate  lover  of  the  great  outdoors,  who  regards  the  fur 
trade  as  one  of  the  best  untold  stories  of  American  adventure  in  the 
wilds  and  in  industry.  The  adventures  and  romance  are  just  as 
fascinating  in  the  trade  as  on  the  hunting  field. 

A.  C.  L. 


CONTENTS 

PART  I 


PAGE 


I.  Is  THE  World  Facing  a  Permanent  Shortage  of  Furs?  In- 
crease IN  Values,  Enormous  Increases  in  Numbers  of 
Skins  Sold  and  Transfer  of  Fur  Centres  from  Europe 

TO  America i 

II.    What  Brought  the  Fur  Markets  of  the  World  to  America?      i6 

III.  Things  Every  Woman,  Who  Buys  Furs,  Should  Know    .        .      25 

IV.  False  Furs  and  Fake  Trade  Names 42 

V.     Fur  Farming  to  Supply  the  World  Demand  for  Furs  —  Silver 

Fox 50 

VI.     Fur    Farming    for  Broadtail,  Persian  Lamb,  Astra ch an  and 

Krimmer 66 

VII.    The  Dyeing  and  the  Dressing  of  the  Furs      ....      78 

VIII.     Farming  Muskrat  for  Fur 90 

IX.    The  Rare  Furs  of  the  Weasel  Family 97 

X.    Sea  Otter  and  Land  Otter 109 

XI.     Beaver  and  Nutria 118 

XII.    Concerning  Fur  Seals 125 

XIII.  The  Other  Great  Staple  Furs.  Skunk,  Raccoon,  Badger, 
Wolverine,  Cat,  Cougar,  Lynx,  Red  and  White  Fox,  Bear, 
Wolf,  Ermine,  Chinchilla,  Mole,  Rabbit,  Fitch,  Opossum    134 

Appendix  to  Part  I 151 

Laws  of  United  States  and  Canadian  Provinces  Revised 
to  Date  on  Seasons  for  Different  Furs.  Laws  to  Pre- 
serve Game  —  Fur  Farms  —  Licenses  and  Royalties  to 
Game  Wardens 

ziii 


xiv  CONTENTS 

PART  II 

CHAPTEE  PAGE 

I.    The  Taking  of  the  Beaver 189 

II.    The  Making  of  the  Moccasins 201 

III.  The  Indian  Trapper 210 

IV.  Ba'tiste,  the  Bear  Hunter 223 

V.    John  Colter  —  Free  Trapper 236 

VI.    The  Greatest  Fur  Company  of  the  World        ....  253 

VII.     KooT  and  the  Bob-Cat 273 

VIII.     Other  Little  Animals  besides  Wahboos  the  Rabbit — Being 
AN  Account  of  Musquash  the  Muskrat,  Sikak  the  Skunk, 

Wenusk  the  Badger,  and  Others 286 

IX.    The   Rare   Furs  —  How  the  Trapper  Takes   Sakwasew  the 
Mink,  Nekik  the  Otter,  Wuchak  the  Fisher,  and  Wapistan 

THE  Marten 300 

X.    Under  the  North  Star  —  Where  Fox  and  Ermine  Run  .        -314 

XL    What  the  Trapper  Stands  for 327 

Appendix  to  Part  II 332 


LIST  OF   ILLUSTRATIONS 

American  Museum  of  Natural  History Frontispiece 

FACING  PAGE 

A  Trapper  Tepee i 

Sorting  Furs  in  St.  Louis  before  a  Scale i6 

Note  the  Depth  of  Beaver  Compared  to  Nutria 17 

Hudson  Seal  with  Skunk  and  Bear  Trimming 32 

Real  and  Imitation  Silver  Fox 33 

Dyed  Red  Fox  Showing  Method  of  Gluing  in  the  Badger  Hairs     ...  48 

Two  Types  of  Imitation  Silver  Fox 49 

Types  of  Badger  and  Lynx  and  Wolf  Skin  Effects 64 

Very  Fine  Coon  Coat 65 

Nutria 80 

Beaver :  Small  Specimen 80 

Fisher  Skins  —  a  Fur  that  Defies  Imitation 81 

Red  Fox  Dyed  for  Silver  Fox 96 

Fur  Farming  in  Prince  Edward  Island 97 

Blue  Fox  of  Pribilofs,  Alaska 112 

Karakul  Lamb  on  Dr.  Young's  Ranch,  Kerman,  California   .        .        .        -113 

Muskrat  Raw  and  Plucked 128 

Stretching  Boards  with  Centre  Wedge 129 

Marten  Front  and  Back 144 

Mink 145 

Marten 160 

Otter 161 

Alaska  Fur  Seal  Group 176 

Fur  Seal  Rookery,  Pribilof  Island,  Alaska 177 

Polar  White  Fox  and  Arctic  Hare 192 

Wolverine       .............  193 

Very  Fine  Gray  Squirrel 208 

Polar  Ermine  with  His  Victim 209 

Very  Fine  Bunch  of  Mink 224 

Badger 225 

Ba'tiste  —  a  Fur  Hunter  of  Cumberland  Lake 240 

Getting  into  Light  Rapids 241 

XV 


A  Trapper's  Tepee — Dog  on  Guard. 


THE  FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 


CHAPTER  I 

IS  THE  WORLD  FACING  A  PERMANENT  SHORTAGE  OF  FURS  ?  IN- 
CREASE IN  VALUES,  ENORMOUS  INCREASES  IN  NUMBERS  OF 
SKINS  SOLD  AND  TRANSFER  OF  FUR  CENTRES  FROM  EUROPE  TO 
AMERICA 

Is  the  world  facing  a  permanent  shortage  of  furs  ? 

Lovers  of  the  wild  Hfe  say  it  is.  Fur  dealers  say  it  is  not ;  and 
both  present  cogent  reasons  for  their  arguments. 

It  is  the  oldest  industry  in  the  world,  fur  hunting,  fur  trading. 
The  cave  man,  who  slew  a  beast  with  a  club  to  take  a  pelt  for  his 
own  covering,  was  the  world's  first  manufacturer ;  and  his  discovery 
that  a  pelt  would  make  clothes  for  himself  and  his  family  led  far 
afield  to  the  exploration  of  half  the  world.  It  was  the  little  beaver 
led  discoverers  up  the  St.  Lawrence  to  the  Great  Lakes,  and  from 
the  Great  Lakes  down  North  to  Hudson  Bay  and  down  South  from 
the  Mississippi  to  the  Rio  Grande,  and  down  the  Mackenzie  to  the 
Arctic,  and  across  the  mountains  down  the  Columbia  to  the  Pacific. 
It  was  the  little  beaver  led  Peter  Skene  Ogden's  fur  brigade  from 
the  mouth  of  the  Columbia  across  what  are  now  the  States  of 
Montana,  Idaho,  Washington,  Oregon,  Nevada,  Utah,  Northern 
California. 

And  it  was  the  little  sable  led  the  Cossacks  across  Russia  to 
what  is  now  Kamchatka ;  and  it  was  the  sea  otter  that  led  the 
Russians,  Americans,  Spaniards  and  EngHshmen  around  the  world 
in  crazy  little  cockle-shell  sail  boats  to  explore  the  Pacific  Coast 
from  the  Golden  Gate  to  Bering  Sea. 


2  THE  FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

It  is  a  page  of  romance  unequalled  in  all  history. 

The  canoe  brigade  pushing  North  to  new  hunting  grounds 
shunned  followers  and  poachers  in  their  preserve  more  than  a 
diplomat  shuns  a  modern  newspaper  reporter.  If  the  fur  hunters 
found  fine  new  fields,  where  beaver  and  otter  and  silver  fox  and 
fisher  and  muskrat  and  marten  and  sable  were  plentiful,  they  were 
not  going  to  tell  it  to  rival  traders,  not  they.  They  were  not  going 
to  be  followed  by  rivals ;  and  when  they  came  out,  either  down  to 
St.  Louis,  or  down  to  Montreal,  or  over  the  mountains  down  the 
Columbia,  they  were  not  going  to  tell  they  had  made  a  new  find 
of  a  fine  hunting  ground,  that  would  attract  other  hunters  the  next 
year.  They  even  concealed  the  number  of  their  packs  and  shipped 
them  out  by  different  ports  so  the  world  would  not  know  what 
was  coming  from  where. 

Just  as  elusive  and  secretive  were  the  individual  trappers  out 
on  the  ground  going  the  rounds  of  their  traps.  If  they  came  on 
beaver  and  otter  and  mink  and  fisher  signs,  do  you  think  they  were 
going  to  advertise  the  fact  to  brother  trappers  .''  Not  they !  Ask 
them  about  the  hunt  j  and  they  would  answer  invariably,  then  as 
now  —  "Poor,  very  poor,  getting  scarcer  every  year." 

The  very  same  elusiveness  marked  the  latest  development  of 
fur  trading  in  fur  farming.  Fur  farming  really  began  back  in  the 
i88o's,  in  Prince  Edward  Island  ;  but  it  was  less  than  ten  years  ago 
that  the  facts  came  out  to  the  world.  The  first  farmer  of  silver 
foxes  had  been  expressing  and  posting  skins  from  half  a  dozen  post 
offices  before  his  nearest  neighbors  knew  he  was  succeeding ;  and 
by  the  time  his  bank  deposits  in  a  dozen  different  banks  had  totalled 
$225,000  he  was  selHng  breeding  stock  for  other  silver  fox  farms 
up  to  $10,000  and  $30,000  a  pair.  In  the  twinkling  of  an  eye 
$26,000,000  was  invested  in  silver  fox  farming  in  Prince  Edward 
Island.  Wild  bush  lands  had  jumped  to  higher  values  than  farm 
lands ;  and  the  thing  became  a  mania  like  oil,  or  gold.  Then  came 
the  War ;  and  prices  slumped.  Pelts  would  not  sell  at  all  in  London  ; 
and  breeding  stock  dropped  to  $100  and  $200  and  $400  a  pair.    The 


TRANSFER  FROM  EUROPE  TO  AMERICA       3 

pessimists  shrieked  with  glee.  "Didn't  we  tell  you  it  was  a  soap 
bubble  due  to  burst  ?"  "You  can  never  raise  wild  animals  in  captiv- 
ity" and  so  on  and  on  and  on;  the  usual  chorus  of  a  gloria  when 
an  untried  venture  goes  to  smash. 

But,  presto,  barely  was  the  War  over,  when  fashion  went  fox 
skin  mad ;  and  silver  fox  skins  sold  at  the  fur  auctions  of  Montreal 
and  St.  Louis  and  New  York  in  the  spring  of  1920  at  $1200  a  skin 
for  a  single  neck  piece ;  and  one  fox  farm  of  Prince  Edward  Island, 
consisting  of  220  acres  and  66  foxes,  sold  for  $100,000. 

Doesn't  look  as  if  fox  farming  had  come  to  such  a  bad  smash 
after  all,  does  it .'' 

But  if  the  fur  traders  and  the  fur  trappers  and  the  fur  farmers 
are  secretive  and  elusive,  their  secrecy  is  as  an  open  book  compared 
to  the  secrecy  of  the  trade  —  of  the  dressers  and  dyers  and  manu- 
facturers. 

The  general  public  may  not  know  it;  but  the  fur  trade  does. 
The  excellence  of  fur  depends  far  more  on  the  dresser  and  dyer  and 
manufacturer  than  on  the  trapper.  The  law  protects  and  fore- 
fends  the  trapper  from  mistakes.  He  may  not  use  poison ;  for  that 
fevers  the  animal  and  spoils  the  pelt  and  reduces  his  price.  He  may 
not  trap  out  of  season ;  for  the  fur  will  be  unprime ;  and  the  game 
warden  will  confiscate  it.  Furs  to  the  value  of  $25,000  have  been 
confiscated  from  one  trapper  in  Alaska  this  year.  And  even  if  he 
got  the  unprime  fur  past  the  game  warden  out  to  market,  unprime 
fur  sheds  hairs.  It  would  bring  a  poor  price,  a  price  for  only 
felting  and  hatting;  and  the  buyers  would  "spot"  him  and  shun 
his  goods. 

So  the  fur  usually  comes  in  good  or  fair  condition  from  the 
hunting  field.  It  is  in  the  dressing  and  dyeing  that  it  will  be  made 
or  marred ;  and  dressers  and  dyers  are  not  going  to  tell  one  another 
their  secrets  and  inventions  and  mysteries.  No  dime  novel  could 
exaggerate  the  mystery  of  these  dyes  and  processes.  To  the  secret 
rooms,  no  outsider  is  ever  admitted.  ^  Formulas  are  written  in  code, 
and  much  of  the  process  can  only  be  learned  man  from  man,  ancjl 


4  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

conveyed  by  seeing  and  trying  out.  When  the  War  demoralized 
the  European  dye  centres  —  London,  Paris,  Leipzic  —  American 
firms  hurried  to  Europe  and  hired  the  expert  dyers  and  dressers, 
paying  them  hterally  higher  remuneration  than  crown  princes  and 
crown  princesses  of  Europe  draw.  Sorters  of  furs  get  $6500  for 
three  months'  work,  twice  as  much  as  a  professor  gets  for  a  year. 
Good  fur  dressers,  mere  boys  many  of  them,  draw  from  $100  to  $105 
a  week.  By  the  time  the  War  was  over,  America  was  doing  the 
huge  dye  business  which  Europe  had  done,  though  Europe  was 
slashing  prices  50%  to  try  to  woo  back  the  lost  trade.  The  best 
fur  dyers  of  Europe  represent  sixty  years  of  effort  and  trial.  I 
know  one  American  firm  that  brought  over  its  dyers  from  Leipzic 
when  the  War  broke  out.  It  sacrificed  20,000  muskrat  pelts  in 
one  experiment  to  get  tints  just  right  and  100,000  rabbit  skins  in 
another  experiment.  It  is  now  dyeing  muskrat  by  the  half  million 
a  season,  and  rabbits  yearly  in  quantities  running  from  seven  to 
eighteen  millions.  I  know  another  firm  that  twenty  years  ago 
was  treating  100,000  muskrats  a  year.  It  is  now  treating  four 
million  a  year;  and  it  declares  the  trade  demand  is  stronger  and 
stronger  than  it  can  ever  fill.  Mystery,  romance,  adventure, 
secrecy,  chances  to  satiate  the  soul  of  a  gambler  —  all  have  marked 
the  fur  trade  from  the  time  the  little  beaver  on  the  East  and  the  little 
sable  to  the  West  lured  the  discovery  and  exploration  of  a  continent, 
down  to  our  own  days,  when  America  captured  the  great  fur  sales 
of  Europe  and  followed  up  this  capture  by  getting  the  European 
dye  processes  and  improving  on  them. 

Has  the  last  chapter  of  the  great  fur  romance  been  written  ? 

Have  we  reached,  or  are  we  reaching,  the  extinction  of  all  furs  ? 

It  is  a  pretty  big  question  ;  and  it  is  a  very  serious  one ;  for  there 
is  no  material  will  take  the  place  of  fur  as  protection  against  cold. 

The  increase  in  the  value  of  individual  furs  is  something  stagger- 
ing and  almost  incredible. 

The  trapper  to-day  sells  some  small  furs  for  more  than  he  could 
reaUze  on  an  ordinary  gold  nugget.     He  comes  out  of  the  wilds 


TRANSFER  FROM  EUROPE  TO  AMERICA 


with  a  bag  of  pelts  to-day  representing  six  months'  work,  on  which 
he  realizes  more  than  the  old  California  Forty-Niner  realized  on 
a  bag  of  gold  dust. 

Figures  are  tiresome ;  but  look  at  this  scale  of  figures  and  trans- 
late it  in  terms  of  silver  fox  neck  pieces  sheeny  as  silver,  or  sable 
soft  as  a  veil  of  down,  or  broadtail  with  the  lustre  of  onyx,  or  beaver 
golden  brown  as  autumn  leaves  in  a  mid-day  sun,  with  the  very 
tang  of  the  wilds  and  smell  of  the  woods  and  crackle  of  ozone  frost 
in  the  romantic  atmosphere  of  furs. 

Imports  of  furs  to  the  United  States  have  gone  up  250%  in 
four  years. 

In  1870,  there  were  only  twenty-one  fur  firms  in  New  York. 
There  are  now  thousands. 


187S 

1913 

1920 

Beaver 

$1.00 

.50 

S-oo 

50.00 

100.00 

10.00 

3.00 

2.00 

.10  to  .12 

$8.00 

1.50  to    $5.00 

15.00  to    50.00 

125.00  up 

500.00 

30.00  to  125.00 

12.00  to    50.00 

2.50  to    20.00 

.40  to      1. 00 

$17.50  to    $20.00 

.50  to        4.00 

143.00  to    345.00 

300.00  to  1225.00 

146.00  to  165.00 

45.00  to  60.00 

18.00  to  60.00 

5.00  to    7.50 

Ermine     .     . 
Fisher 

Silver  fox 
Black  fox      . 
Fur  seal  .     . 
Lvnx   . 

Marten    .     . 
Muskrat  .     . 

Otter,  which  I  have  bought  from  trappers  in  British  Columbia 
at  $25  for  two  perfect  skins,  brought  in  Montreal  and  New  York 
this  spring  $100  for  the  best  pelts. 

English  dealers  used  to  pay  lOj^  a  pound  for  rabbit,  to  be  dyed 
and  resold  as  Near  and  Electric  seal.  This  year  England  has  paid 
as  high  as  ^o^  a  pound  and  imported  90,000,000  rabbits.  In  the 
New  York  auction  sales,  best  Australian  rabbit  sold  at  from  $1.40 
to  $3.15. 

In  1919,  muskrats,  which  you  will  buy  dyed  as  Hudson  seal, 
or  imitation  mink,  were  selling  up  at  Norway  House,  north-east  ol 
Lake  Winnipeg,  for  50ji.     By  1920,  they  were  selling  at  ^5. 


6  THE  FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

In  1 914,  white  fox  was  at  $16.  By  1917,  it  was  $20.  By  1920, 
white  fox  sold  in  Montreal  at  $60  to  $70. 

Beavers  that  were  $6.50  in  1917  were  $8.50  by  19 18  and  $20 
by  1919. 

The  world  fur  sales  dispose  of  100,000,000  pelts  a  year,  not  count- 
ing rabbit  and  mole  and  muskrat. 

In  the  April  sales  of  three  great  fur  markets  in  1920,  almost 
4,000,000  skins  were  sold  in  the  New  York  market,  nearly  9,000,000 
on  the  London  market,  and  over  7,000,000  on  the  St.  Louis  market. 
Add  to  this  the  Montreal  sales ;  multiply  by  three  sales  a  year ; 
and  you  have  almost  100,000,000  skins  sold  yearly  in  the  United 
States  and  Canada,  including  rabbits,  mole  and  muskrat. 

Montreal  thinks  nothing  of  a  fur  sale  totalling  $5,000,000  to 
$6,000,000;  St.  Louis  $27,000,000  to  $30,000,000;  and  New  York 
$12,000,000  to  $27,000,000. 

Before  the  War,  the  United  States  had  a  total  fur  trade  —  what 
we  bought  and  what  we  sold  —  of  $40,000,000.  To-day,  that 
trade  is  over  $100,000,000. 

In  the  environs  of  New  York  only  are  830  manufacturers  of 
furs,  170  importers  of  furs,  25  firms  devoted  exclusively  to  dressing 
furs  and  12,000  skilled  dressers  and  dyers,  supporting  a  population 
of  60,000  people  drawing  their  living  from  furs. 

That  is  —  there  are  more  people  making  a  living  out  of  furs 
round  New  York  only  than  there  are  hunters  and  trappers  from 
the  Rio  Grande  to  the  Arctic  Circle. 

In  the  palmiest  days  of  the  palmiest  past,  when  it  had  not  a 
rival  from  Hudson  Bay  to  the  Pacific  or  from  the  Arctic  to  the 
Missouri,  the  Hudson  Bay  did  not  sell  half  a  milHon  dollars' 
worth  of  furs.  To-day  furs  of  a  greater  value  pass  through 
Edmonton  alone,  and  it  is  now  only  one  of  a  dozen  great  com- 
panies operating  in  America. 

The  world  is  doing  the  greatest  fur  business  in  all  its  history. 
The  world  appetite  for  furs  is  an  insatiable  demand  that  cries  for 
more,  the  more  it  gets.     With  high  power  silent  rifles,  with  newly 


TRANSFER  FROM  EUROPE  TO  AMERICA   7 

rich,  with  the  fashion  for  summer  furs,  with  tramp  steamers  and 
free  hunters  owing  responsibihty  to  no  man  penetrating  Farthest 
North  and  offering  crazy  Klondike  prices  to  trappers,  how  long  are 
our  furs  going  to  last  ?  Hasn't  the  buffalo  been  practically  ex- 
terminated except  for  park  preserves  ?  Wasn't  the  beaver  be- 
coming almost  extinct,  when  the  Canadian  provinces  —  especially 
Quebec  and  Ontario  —  clapped  on  closed  seasons  some  eighteen 
years  ago  ?  Before  the  rise  of  the  Bolsheviki,  hadn't  Russia  put  a 
closed  season  on  sable  ?  Like  the  buffalo,  hasn't  sea  otter  —  the 
most  beautiful  fur  of  all  peltries  —  almost  vanished  ?  It  used  to  be 
taken  in  the  Aleutians  in  the  hundreds  of  thousands.  In  the  1920 
spring  fur  sales,  only  three  were  offered  in  New  York,  only  fifteen 
in  London,  only  seven  in  St.  Louis.  And  before  Pelagic  Sealing 
was  stopped  by  International  Treaty,  wasn't  the  beautiful  Alaska 
seal  going  the  same  way  ?  Won't  the  fate  of  chinchilla  and  mink 
and  marten  and  sable  be  the  same  ?  Isn't  the  last  chapter  of  the 
great  fur  romance  being  written  f  Aren't  we  reaching  the  ex- 
tinction of  all  game  ? 

The  very  note  of  pessimism  in  that  question  answers  itself. 

Beaver  have  come  back. 

Alaska  seal  has  come  back. 

Silver  fox  are  more  plentiful  than  ever. 

Buffalo  have  multiplied  from  a  few  hundred  in  one  Canadian 
park  to  5000  in  ten  years,  and  if  half  a  dozen  sea  otters  could  be 
captured  unharmed  alive,  there  is  not  the  slightest  doubt  they 
could  be  brought  back  to  a  plentiful  supply. 

And  Persian  and  Astrachan  and  Krimmer  lambs  are  being  bred 
in  America  and  just  beginning  to  come  on  the  market  as  fur. 

Skunk  has  been  trapped  in  America  for  two  hundred  years  and 
is  more  plentiful  on  the  fur  market  than  ever  before. 

Rabbits  are  such  a  pest  in  Australia,  poison  and  trap  have  failed 
to  exterminate  them ;  and  in  certain  sections  they  have  ruined  the 
pasture. 

Muskrats  are  coming  to  the  market  in  millions ;   and  so  prolific 


8  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

are  they  in  their  habits,  there  is  not  a  hint  of  the  supply  falling 
off. 

Beaver  has  been  brought  back  through  a  few  years  of  closed 
seasons.  Indeed,  in  Algonquin  Park,  Canada,  where  it  was  espe- 
cially protected,  it  became  so  plentiful,  adjacent  sections  asked  leave 
to  destroy  beaver  dams  to  prevent  flooding  of  lands. 

The  Alaska  seal  had  dwindled  to  a  few  thousands  a  year  on  the 
market,  when  the  stoppage  of  Pelagic  Sealing  gave  the  mothers 
and  pups  a  chance  to  Hve ;  and  now  the  Alaska  seal  has  so  mul- 
tiplied in  less  than  ten  years  that  by  1922,  it  is  expected  there  will 
regularly  be  not  less  than  100,000  young  Alaska  male  seals  yearly 
on  the  fur  market. 

"Only  ten  years  ago,  I  asked  one  of  the  greatest  fur  merchants 
in  the  world  —  a  man  who  deals  from  Persia  and  Siberia  to  Alaska 
and  Athabasca  —  what  he  thought  of  silver  fox  farming.  "We 
tried,"  he  said,  "and  it  didn't  succeed."  Yet  to-day  there  are 
36  fox  farms  in  the  United  States,  29  other  fur  farms  in  the  United 
States,  and  in  Canada,  not  less  than  100  fox  farms,  besides  1000 
fur  farms  of  mink,  karakul  sheep,  skunks,  raccoons,  beaver.  In 
many  cases,  the  fur  farm  is  simply  an  adjunct  to  other  farming; 
but  the  fox  farms  are  exclusively  devoted  to  fox. 

Closed  seasons,  fur  farms  and  game  preserves  have  restored 
beaver,  Alaska  seal,  fox,  buffalo.  High  markets  may  stimulate 
the  pursuit  of  fur-bearing  animals ;  but  they  also  stimulate  the 
preservation.  The  little  furs,  of  which  the  greatest  number  are 
taken,  are  also  the  most  prolific  of  animals;  and  the  danger  of 
muskrat  and  rabbits  is  of  their  multiplying  to  the  point  of  self- 
extermination  through  pest  and  starvation. 

Without  attempting  to  enumerate  all  the  great  fur  companies 
now  doing  an  enormous  business  in  America,  it  may  be  stated 
that  the  raw  furs  converge  to  some  half  dozen  places  :  in  Canada 
to  Montreal,  Winnipeg  and  Edmonton;  in  the  United  States  to 
St.  Paul,  St.  Louis,  San  Francisco,  Chicago  and  New  York.  Only 
St.  Louis,  Montreal  and  New  York  are  in  the  true  sense  fur  markets 


TRANSFER  FROM  EUROPE  TO  AMERICA        9 

for  the  world.  Others  are  London,  Leipzic,  Nijni  Novgorod  for  Eng- 
land, Germany  and  Russia.  To  these  great  marts  come  all  the  best 
furs  of  the  whole  world,  the  sea  otter  of  the  Aleutian,  the  beaver 
and  marten  and  mink  of  Hudson  Bay,  the  ermine  and  sable  of 
Russia,  the  lamb  skins  of  Persia,  the  nutria  and  chinchilla  of  South 
America.  Here  congregated  all  the  buyers  of  the  fur  world  and  the 
sellers,  though  the  actual  purchasing  was  done  by  expert  fur  brokers. 

In  London  the  furs  were  sold  by  auction  at  such  well-known 
sales  as  Lampson's,  Nesbitt's  and  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company. 
After  thorough  examination  of  the  pelts  as  classified,  the  buyers 
assembled  before  the  auctioneer  —  sometimes  in  a  huge  glass- 
lighted  room  at  the  top  of  the  warehouses,  or  away  from  the  furs 
altogether  in  some  regular  sales  room.  At  the  fur  sales,  a  silent  nod 
of  the  head  knocked  down  a  bid. 

Formerly,  these  sales  were  more  picturesque.  They  were 
held  at  some  well-known  coffee-house,  with  the  classified  pelts 
stacked  up  at  one  side.  Buyers  were  regaled  with  sumptuous 
dinners  by  the  sellers.  Then,  a  lighted  candle  with  pins  stuck  in 
at  intervals  was  put  up.  This  is  what  is  meant  by  the  announce- 
ment "sales  by  inch  of  candle."  Bids  were  received  as  the  candle 
burned  from  pin  to  pin  —  quick  work,  for  the  candle  was  a  pencil- 
like thing.  The  last  bid  was  the  one  before  the  flame  went  out; 
and  to  that  bidder  went  the  furs.  March,  January  and  November 
seem  always  to  have  been  the  favorite  months  for  the  fur  sales  in 
London.  The  furs  sold  were  not  necessarily  those  recently  come  to 
market.  It  was  a  trick,  almost  a  clairvoyant  sixth  sense,  to  scent  the 
coming  vagaries  of  fashion,  and  when  a  rare  fur  was  down  in  price 
to  buy  it  up  and  store  it  in  warehouses  till  fashion's  pendulum  swung 
round  again,  when  out  would  come  the  same  raw  fur  to  be  auctioned 
at  a  higher  price. 

The  Leipzic  fur  sales  took  the  form  of  a  great  Fur  Fair  at  Easter. 
Warehouses  that  had  been  closed  as  dungeons  for  the  year,  hiding 
secrets  of  famous  dyeing  processes  from  rivals  and  which  no  one 
could  enter  or  leave  without  being  searched,  not  even  trusted 


lo  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

workers,  now  opened  to  the  public  like  a  flower  to  spring.  Thither 
flocked  buyers  and  sellers  from  America,  from  Persia,  from  China, 
from  Siberia,  from  Japan,  from  Tibet,  from  England,  from  South 
America.  Quaint  costumes  were  seen  in  the  streets.  For  two  weeks 
the  fair  lasted,  a  curious  relic  of  bygone  customs  come  down  to 
modern  days.  The  broker  was  an  expert  at  haggling,  the  seller 
at  holding  off,  so  that  as  merry  a  game  of  bartering  went  on  as  with 
the  fish-wife  who  comes  to  market  at  four  in  the  morning  that  she 
may  have  the  pleasure  of  refusing  customers  till  mid-day. 

Why  should  Germany,  which  is  not  one  of  the  great  fur  producers, 
be  famed  as  a  market  for  furs  f  The  secret  was  in  the  dyeing  and 
dressing.  Whole  hamlets  and  towns  were  given  over  to  the  dressing 
of  raw  furs.  Austria  and  Russia  produce  the  best  squirrel  skins 
for  linings  in  the  world ;  but  the  skins  from  both  must  be  sent  to 
Germany  to  be  dressed.  Sometimes  the*  secret  was  in  getting  the 
oil  out  of  the  pelts  without  tingeing  the  white  fur  yellow,  as  in  the 
case  of  ermine  and  white  fox  and  Polar  bear.  Again,  other  dressers 
poHshed  the  furs  with  inferior  grease  instead  of  butter ;  or  deodorized 
them  imperfectly  instead  of  tramping  with  mahogany  sawdust. 
Other  raw  fur  fairs  were  held  in  Germany,  but  they  were  for  the  local 
product,  not  the  world  market. 

In  Russia,  fairs  are  also  the  method  of  selling  raw  furs :  at 
Irbit  in  February,  at  Ischim  in  December,  at  Nijni  Novgorod  in 
August.  And  to  Kiatka,  on  the  border  of  China,  blue-gowned 
mandarins  and  merchant  princes  and  Chinese  nobles  still  come  for 
the  ermine  and  the  marten  and  the  sable  of  Siberian  wilds,  as  their 
ancestors  came  two  hundred  years  ago  to  barter  with  wild  Cossacks 
and  Siberian  bandits  and  Chuckchee  traders  and  Alaskan  sea  otter 
hunters.  China  produces  very  few  furs  and  those  of  poor  quality; 
but  the  Chinese  grandee  has  as  great  a  passion  for  fine  fur  trimmings 
as  the  London  grand  dame  for  Jager  diamonds  and  Burmah  rubies. 
Long  before  the  Western  world  had  awakened  to  the  beauty  of 
seal  and  sea  otter,  there  was  a  high-priced  market  for  both  in  China. 

But  the  great  fur  fair  of  the  year  in  Russia  —  the  one  which 


TRANSFER  FROM  EUROPE  TO  AMERICA   ii 

is  a  world  market  —  is  at  Nijni.  For  a  year  by  flat-bottom  raft 
boat,  by  reindeer  sled,  and  by  long  dusty  Persian  caravan,  the 
furs  have  been  on  their  way  to  Nijni.  The  little  place  doubles 
and  quadruples  in  size  like  a  mushroom  city.  By  August,  the 
fair  is  open.  Here,  chiefly,  are  sold  the  furs  of  Asia  —  Persian  and 
Astrachan  lamb,  Mongolian  goat,  Siberian  sable  and  ermine,  the 
great  timber  wolf,  the  rare  squirrel-skin  linings  —  gray  almost  to 
silver,  or  black  and  glossy  as  jet  —  and  a  few,  the  very  few  of  the 
diminishing  sea  otter  and  seal.  There,  as  Kipling  says  of  the  Suez, 
East  and  West  meet  —  the  furs  brought  down  by  canoe  and  dog- 
train  from  the  Canadian  Northwest  jostle  with  the  pelts  brought  by 
reindeer  and  caravan  from  Siberia  and  Persia. 

Now  come  back  to  the  question  —  Is  the  world  facing  a  star- 
vation in  furs  ^ 

Take  a  map  of  the  Northern  fur  country.  Take  a  good  look  at 
it  —  not  just  a  Pullman  car  glance.  The  Canadian  Government 
have  again  and  again  advertised  thousands,  hundreds  of  thousands, 
millions  of  acres  of  free  land.  Latitudinally,  that  is  perfectly  true. 
Wheat-wise,  it  isn't.  When  you  go  seventy  miles  north  of  Sas- 
katchewan River  (barring  Peace  Riv^r  in  sections)  you  are  in  a 
climate  that  will  grow  wheat  all  right  —  splendid  wheat,  the  hardest 
and  finest  in  the  world.  That  is,  twenty  hours  of  sunlight  —  not 
daylight  but  sunlight  —  force  growth  rapidly  enough  to  escape 
late  spring  and  early  fall  frosts ;  but  the  plain  fact  of  the  matter 
is,  wheat  land  does  not  exist  north  of  the  Saskatchewan  except  in 
sections  along  Peace  River.  What  does  exist  f  Cataracts  countless 
—  Churchill  River  is  one  succession  of  cataracts  ;  vast  rivers  ;  lakes 
unmapped,  links  and  chains  of  lakes  by  which  you  can  go  from  the 
Saskatchewan  to  the  Arctic  without  once  lifting  your  canoe ;  quak- 
ing muskegs  —  areas  of  amber  stagnant  water  full  of  what  the 
Indians  call  mermaid's  hair,  lined  by  ridges  of  moss  and  sand 
overgrown  with  coarse  goose  grass  and  the  "reed  that  grows  like 
a  tree"  —  muskrat  reed,  a  tasselled  corn-like  tufted  growth  sixteen 
feet  high  —  areas  of  such  muskegs  mile  upon  mile.     I  traversed  one 


12  THE  FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

such  region  above  Cumberland  Lake  seventy  miles  wide  by  three 
hundred  long  where  you  could  not  find  solid  ground  to  camp  the 
size  of  your  foot.  What  did  we  do  ?  That  is  where  the  uses  of  a 
really  expert  guide  came  in ;  moored  our  canoe  among  the  willows, 
cut  willows  enough  to  keep  feet  from  sinking,  spread  oil  cloth  and 
rugs  over  this,  erected  the  tents  over  all,  tying  the  guy  ropes  to  the 
canoe  thwarts  and  willows,  as  the  ground  would  not  hold  the  tent  pegs. 

It  doesn't  sound  as  if  such  regions  would  ever  be  overrun  by 
settlement  —  does  it .?  Now,  look  at  your  map,  seventy  miles 
north  of  Saskatchewan.  From  the  north-west  corner  down  in 
Labrador  Is  a  distance  of  more  than  3000  miles.  From  the  South 
to  North  is  a  distance  of  almost  2000  miles.  I  once  asked  a  guide 
with  a  truly  city  air  if  these  distances  were  "as  the  crow  flies." 
He  gave  me  a  look  that  I  would  not  like  to  have  a  guide  give  me  too 
often  —  he  might  maroon  a  fool  on  one  of  those  swamp  areas. 

"There  ain't  no  distances  as  the  crow  flies  in  this  country," 
he  answered.  "You  got  to  travel  'cording  as  the  waters  collect  or 
the  ice  goes  out." 

Well,  here  is  your  country,  3000  by  2000  miles,  a  great  fur 
preserve.  What  exists  in  it  ?  Very  little  wood,  and  that  small. 
Undoubtedly,  some  minerals.  I  myself  saw  brought  by  an  Indian 
from  some  unknown  mine  on  Churchill  River  a  piece  of  pure  natural 
copper  the  size  of  a  man's  hand.  What  else  exists  .''  A  very  sparse 
population  of  Indians,  whose  census  no  man  knows,  for  it  has  never 
been  taken ;  but  when  the  total  Indian  population  of  Canada  is 
only  100,000  and  you  deduct  from  the  total  those  on  reserves  and 
those  on  the  Pacific  Coast,  it  Is  a  pretty  safe  guess  to  say  there  are 
not  20,000  Indians  all  told  in  the  North  fur  country.  I  put  this 
guess  tentatively  and  should  be  glad  of  information  from  any  one 
in  a  position  to  guess  closer.  I  have  asked  the  Hudson's  Bay 
Company  and  I  have  asked  Revillons  how  many  white  hunters 
and  traders  they  thought  were  in  the  fur  country  of  the  North. 
I  have  never  met  any  one  who  placed  the  number  in  the  North 
at  more  than  2000.     Spread  2000  white  hunters  with  10,000  Indians 


TRANSFER   FROM  EUROPE  TO  AMERICA      13 

—  for  of  the  total  population  half  are  women  and  children  —  over 
an  area  the  size  of  two-thirds  of  Europe  —  I  ask  you  frankly,  do 
you  think  they  are  going  to  exterminate  the  game  very  fast  ?  Re- 
member the  climate  of  the  North  takes  care  of  her  own.  White 
men  can  stand  only  so  many  years  of  that  lonely  cold,  and  they 
have  to  come  out ;  or  they  dwarf  and  degenerate. 

Take  a  single  section  of  this  great  Northern  fur  preserve  —  Lab- 
rador, which  I  visited  some  years  ago.  In  area,  Labrador  is  530,000 
square  miles,  two  and  a  half  times  the  size  of  France,  twice  the  size 
of  Germany,  twice  that  of  former  Austria-Hungary.  Statistical  books 
set  the  population  down  at  4000;  but  the  Moravian  missionaries 
there  told  me  that  including  the  Eskimos  who  come  down  the  coast 
in  summer  and  the  fishermen  who  come  up  the  coast  in  summer 
the  total  population  was  probably  17,000.  Now  Labrador  is  one  of 
the  finest  game  preserves  in  the  world.  On  its  rocky  hills  and 
watery  upper  barrens  where  settlement  can  never  come  are  to  be 
found  silver  fox  —  the  finest  in  the  world,  so  fine  that  the  Revillons 
have  established  a  fur-trading  post  for  silver  fox  on  one  of  the 
islands  —  cross  fox  almost  as  fine  as  silver,  black  ai.d  red  fox,  the 
best  otter  in  the  world,  the  finest  marten  In  America,  bear  of  every 
variety,  very  fine  Norway  lynx,  fine  ermine,  rabbit  or  hare  galore, 
very  fine  wolverine,  fisher,  muskrat,  coarse  harp  seal,  wolf,  caribou, 
beaver,  a  few  mink.  Is  it  common  sense  to  think  the  population 
of  a  few  thousands  can  hunt  out  a  fur  empire  here  the  size  of  two 
Germanys  ? 

Now  take  another  look  at  the  map !  Where  the  Saskatchewan 
takes  a  great  bend  300  miles  north-east  of  Prince  Albert,  it  is  no 
longer  a  river  —  it  is  a  vast  muskeg  of  countless  still  amber  water 
channels  not  twice  the  width  of  your  canoe  and  quaking  silt  islands 
of  sand  and  goose  grass  —  ideal,  hidden  and  almost  impenetrable 
for  small  game.  Always  muskeg  marks  the  limit  of  big  game  and 
the  beginning  of  the  ground  of  the  little  fellows  —  waupoos,  the 
rabbit,  and  musquash,  the  muskrat,  and  sakwasew,  the  mink,  and 
nukik,  the  otter  and  wuchak  or  pekan,  the  fisher.     It  is  a  safe  wager 


14  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

that  the  profits  on  the  millions  upon  millions  of  little  pelts^ — 
hundreds  of  thousands  of  muskrats  are  taken  out  of  this  muskeg 
alone  —  exceed  by  a  hundredfold  the  profits  on  the  larger  furs 
of  beaver  and  silver  fox  and  bear  and  wolf  and  cross  fox  and  marten. 

Look  at  the  map  again  !  North  of  Cumberland  Lake  to  the  next 
fur  post  is  a  trifling  run  of  250  to  300  miles  by  dog  train  to  Lac 
du  Brochet  or  Reindeer  Lake  —  more  muskeg  cut  by  Hmestone  and 
granite  ridges.  Here  you  can  measure  400  miles  east  or  west  and 
not  get  out  of  the  muskeg  till  you  reach  Athabasca  on  the  West 
and  Hudson  Bay  on  the  East.  North  of  Lac  du  Brochet  is  a  straight 
stretch  of  1000  miles  —  nothing  but  rocks  and  cataracts  and  stunted 
woods,  "little  sticks"  the  Indians  call  them  —  and  sky-colored 
waters  in  links  and  chains  and  lakes  with  the  quaking  goose  grass 
and  muskrat  reed  cut  and  chiselled  and  trenched  by  the  amber 
water  ways. 

If  you  think  there  is  any  danger  of  settlement  ever  encroaching 
on  the  muskegs  and  barrens,  come  with  me  on  a  trip  of  some  weeks 
to  the  south  end  of  this  field. 

We  had  been  pulling  against  slack  water  all  day,  water  so  slack 
you  could  dip  your  hand  down  and  fail  to  tell  which  way  the  current 
ran.  Where  the  high  banks  dropped  suddenly  to  such  a  dank 
tangle  of  reeds,  brushwood,  windfall  and  timbers  drifted  1500  miles 
down  from  the  forests  of  the  Rocky  Mountains  —  such  a  tangle  as 
I  have  never  seen  in  any  swamp  of  the  South  —  the  skeleton  of  a 
moose,  come  to  its  death  by  a  jump  among  the  windfall,  marked  the 
eastern  limit  of  big  game ;  and  presently  the  river  was  lost  —  not 
in  a  lake  —  but  in  a  swamp.  A  red  fox  came  scurrying  through  the 
goose  grass,  sniffed  the  air,  looked  at  us  and  ran  along  abreast  of 
our  canoe  for  about  a  mile,  evidently  scenting  the  bacon  of  the 
"grub  box."  Muskrats  fed  on  the  bulb  of  the  tufted  "reed  Hke 
a  tree"  16  feet  high  on  each  side;  and  again  and  again  little  kits 
came  out  and  swam  in  the  ripple  of  our  canoe.  Once  an  old  duck 
performed  the  acrobatic  feat  over  which  nature  and  anti-nature 
writers  have  been  giving  each  other  the  lie.     We  had  come  out  of 


TRANSFER  FROM  EUROPE  TO  AMERICA      15 

the  long  amber  channel  to  be  confronted  by  three  openings  exactly 
alike,  not  much  wider  than  the  length  of  our  Klondike  canoe,  all 
lined  by  the  high  tufted  reed.  MacKenzie,  the  half-breed  rapids 
man,  had  been  telling  us  the  endless  Cree  legends  of  Wa-sa-kee- 
chaulk,  the  Cree  Hiawatha,  and  his  Indian  lore  of  stagnant  waters 
now  lured  him  into  steering  us  to  one  of  the  side  channels.  We 
were  not  expected.  An  old  mother  duck  was  directly  across  our 
path  teaching  some  twenty-two  little  black  hobbling  downy  babies 
to  swim.  With  a  cry  that  shrieked  "leg-it,  leg-it"  plain  as  a  quack 
could  speak  and  which  sent  the  little  fellows  scuttling,  half  swim,  half 
run,  the  old  mother  flung  herself  over  on  her  back  not  a  paddle'sjength 
ahead  of  us,  dipped,  dived,  came  up  again  just  at  our  bow  and 
flopped  broken-winged  over  the  water  ahead  of  us  near  enough  almost 
to  be  caught  by  the  hand ;  but  when  you  stretched  out  your  hand, 
the  crafty  lady  dipped  and  dived  and  came  up  broken-winged  again. 

In  winter,  this  region  is  traversed  by  dog  train  along  the  ice  — 
a  matter  of  500  miles  to  Lac  du  Brochet  and  back,  or  600  miles  to 
Prince  Albert  and  back.  "Oh,  no,  we're  not  far,"  said  a  lonely 
faced  Cambridge  graduate  fur  trader  to  me.  "When  my  Httle  boy 
took  sick  last  winter,  I  had  to  go  only  55  miles.  There  happened 
to  be  a  doctor  in  the  lumber  camp  back  on  the  Ridge." 

But  winter  is  not  all  easy  in  a  50  below  zero  climate  where  you 
can't  find  sticks  any  larger  than  your  finger  to  kindle  night  fire. 

Does  it  sound  very  much  to  you  like  a  region  where  the  settler 
would  ultimately  drive  out  the  fur  trade  ?  What  would  he  settle 
on  ?  That  is  the  point.  Nature  has  taken  good  care  that  climate 
and  swamp  shall  erect  an  everlasting  barrier  to  encroachment  on 
her  game  preserves. 

To  be  sure,  if  you  ask  a  fur  trader,  "How  are  furs.?"  he  will 
answer,  "Poor  —  poorer  every  year."  So  would  you  if  you  were 
a  fur  trader  and  wanted  to  keep  out  rivals.  I  have  never  known 
a  fur  trader  who  did  not  make  that  answer. 

"The  last  chapter  of  the  fur  trade  has  been  written  ?''  Never! 
The  oldest  industry  of  mankind  will  last  as  long  as  mankind  lasts. 


CHAPTER  II 

WHAT  BROUGHT  THE  FUR  MARKETS  OF  THE  WORLD  TO 

AMERICA? 

In  three  different  places  In  the  spring  of  1920  there  occurred 
scenes  that  marked  a  complete  shift  in  the  current  of  a  world  trade. 
These  were  the  fur  auctions  of  Montreal,  New  York  and  St.  Louis. 

A  hundred  years  ago,  there  used  to  float  down  the  Ottawa  and  St. 
Lawrence  to  Montreal,  down  the  Mississippi  and  Missouri  to  St. 
Louis,  flotillas  of  canoes  and  flat-bottomed  scows  and  York  boats 
loaded  to  the  water  line  with  peltries  and  manned  by  grizzled  voy- 
ageurs  who  hadn't  seen  a  razor  or  a  barber's  shears  for  a  year.  In 
Montreal,  the  fur  brigade  arrival  was  celebrated  by  a  Fur  Fair  in 
which  every  kind  of  firearm  and  gew-gaw  was  bartered  with  the 
voyageur  or  trappers  for  the  pelts  from  the  North  Country.  By 
fall,  these  peltries  had  been  sorted  and  shipped  by  slow  sail  boat  for 
England,  where  they  usually  arrived  about  December.  By  spring, 
they  had  been  still  more  carefully  sorted  and  dressed,  and  were  now 
sold  to  the  world  trade  in  a  series  of  auctions,  the  most  important 
one  being  held  in  March  or  April. 

Down  at  St.  Louis,  there  was  no  Fur  Fair.  The  great  Fur 
Fairs  of  the  Mississippi  and  Missouri  were  celebrated  high  up  the 
hinterland  of  the  mountains  In  Pierre's  Hole  below  the  Three 
Tetons,  or  in  Ogden's  Hole  in  Utah ;  but  the  arrival  of  the  boats  and 
canoes  from  the  Up  Country  at  the  muddy  flats  of  St.  Louis  was 
celebrated  noisily,  bibulously  and  hilariously.  The  men  of  the 
mountains  with  long  hair  tied  back  by  twisted  colored  handkerchiefs, 
or  topped  by  coon  caps,  and  dressed  otherwise  in  buckskin  from  coat 

16 


Note  the  Depth  of  Beaver  Compared  to  Nutria. 


FUR  MARKETS  OF  WORLD  17 

to  moccasins,  men  who  strode  erect  as  an  Indian  or  an  arrow,  if 
they  had  not  had  too  much  Jamaica  rum  —  literally  owned  the  little 
frontier  town. 

Here,  too,  the  furs  were  again  sorted  and  shipped  down  the  river 
to  New  Orleans  to  go  out  by  sail  boat  to  New  York  and  London 
and  Hamburg.  The  Napoleonic  Wars  had  bedevilled  international 
currency ;  so  the  boats  of  the  American  fur  trader  did  not  bring  back 
gold.  Instead,  they  brought  back  merchandise,  Japanese  silks,  Chi- 
nese teas,  London  wools  and  cottons  and  cambrics  and  beads,  Ham- 
burg rifles  and  powder  and  ball  and  awls  and  traps  and  sugar  and 
flour  and  rice,  to  be  sent  back  up  the  same  long  lonely  canoe  trail 
to  the  trappers'  rendezvous  in  the  Rockies. 

By  1800  to  1820,  Fur  Fairs  had  long  since  passed  away  in  New 
York ;  but  John  Jacob  Astor  was  in  the  midst  of  his  great  fight  to 
wrest  the  fur  trade  from  the  two  great  Canadian  companies,  the 
Hudson's  Bay  and  the  Nor'-Westers.  They  were  too  strong  for 
him.  They  beat  him  off  the  field  up  in  the  mountains  and  on  the 
mouth  of  the  Columbia ;  but  while  the  New  York  genius  of  the  Yan- 
kee fur  trade  was  beaten  at  a  staggering  loss  to  his  hard-earned 
savings,  the  Bostonnais  —  those  merchants  to  the  Far  East, 
who  had  outfitted  the  discoverer  of  the  Columbia  —  were  reaping 
a  golden  harvest  in  sea  otter  along  the  Pacific  Coast  far  north  as 
Alaska ;  but  their  furs,  too,  were  shipped  abroad  —  to  China,  or 
Hamburg,  or  London. 

America  at  that  time  was  only  a  trader  in  furs,  not  a  dresser, 
nor  manufacturer. 

And  now  time  swings  round  the  cycle  of  another  century  after 
another  great  war ;  and  there  are  held  in  Montreal  and  New  York 
and  St.  Louis  great  world  fur  auctions,  which  have  practically 
wrested  the  world  fur  trade  —  in  part  if  not  in  whole  —  from  Europe 
to  America. 

For  months  bales  and  bundles  and  bags  and  express  and  freight 
and  mail  lots  of  raw  furs  of  every  variety  under  the  sun  have  been 
pouring  into  the  fur  auction  rooms  of  each  city.    There  are  about 


i8  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

sixty  distinct  varieties  of  merchantable  furs,  and  all  represented 
in  the  fur  auction  storerooms.  There  are  skunk  from  Minnesota 
and  Wisconsin.  There  are  muskrat  from  Chesapeake  Bay  and  New 
Jersey  meadows  and  Cumberland  Lake  of  the  Far  Northern  Winter- 
land.  There  are  opossum  from  the  South  and  "  coon,"  too,  from  the 
South,  though  the  best  striped  darkest  coon  comes  from  the  North. 
There  is  mink  from  Hudson  Bay  and  Athabasca,  and  kolinsky  from 
Japan  and  China,  and  sable  from  Siberia  and  pine  marten  from  Brit- 
ish Columbia,  and  otter  from  Labrador  and  Kamchatka,  and  silver 
fox  from  the  fox  farms  of  Prince  Edward  Island  and  the  wild  lands 
of  the  Far  North.  There  is  cross  fox  from  Saskatchewan  and  red 
fox  from  Minnesota  and  beaver  from  Northern  Ontario  and  white 
fox  from  the  Arctic  and  blue  fox  from  Alaska.  There  are  Alaska 
seals  from  the  Commander  Islands,  and  Japanese  seals  not  quite  so 
good  from  off  the  Japanese  Coast  and  a  few  Russian  seals  ranking 
third. 

There  are  not  more  than  two  or  three  sea  otter  at  each  sale; 
for  this  most  beautiful  of  the  world  furs  is  almost  extinct.  Lynx 
and  badger  soft  as  swan's  down  are  here  from  Canada  and  the  North- 
western States.  Rabbits  are  here  in  millions,  chiefly  from  Aus- 
tralia and  Belgium.  Fisher  and  otter  —  the  aristocrats  of  the  con- 
noisseur's favorite  fur  —  are  present  in  a  few  thousand  each,  with 
only  a  few  chinchilla,  squirrel  in  almost  a  million,  and  mole  in  mil- 
lions.    Call  them  the  velvet  or  pansy  furs. 

For  three  months  the  sorters  have  been  at  work  on  these  furs  — 
as  told  elsewhere,  paid  $6000  and  $7000  and  ^10,000  for  three 
months'  work  —  putting  them  into  as  carefully  graded  bundles  as 
wheat  buyers  grade  wheat,  or  apple  buyers  grade  fruit.  Certain 
floors  of  the  warehouses  are  given  over  entirely  to  certain  furs. 
Of  the  grading  and  sorting,  a  layman  may  not  speak.  It  is  more 
ticklish  work  than  awarding  a  prize  in  the  Royal  Academy.  Some 
of  the  furs  are  graded  as  to  size.  Some  are  graded  as  to  age  and 
called  kits.  Then  these  goods  are  subdivided  into  firsts,  middlings 
and  thirds.     Furs  not  prime  —  taken  out  of  season,  or  spoiled  in 


FUR  MARKETS  OF  WORLD  19 

the  skinning,  or  dulled  in  the  curing  —  are  placed  at  the  very  bot- 
tom of  grades  and  usually  sold  only  for  hatting  and  felting  or  fill- 
ings, which  explains  to  the  outsider  why  at  the  same  sale  silver 
fox  sold  at  $1200  and  also  sold  at  ^1.50,  why  a  small  mink  skin  sold 
at  $60  and  another  larger  at  50^. 

You  will  hear  a  true  fur  trader  grit  his  teeth  over  these  sales 
of  unprimes.  "Here,"  he  says,  "is  a  young  silver  fox  spoiled  by  a 
fool  in  the  trapping.  If  this  young  fellow  had  been  allowed  to  grow 
up,  he  would  have  brought  $800;  but  now,  bah,  $1.50,  wasting  the 
trade's  time." 

The  buyers  fall  on  the  unprimes  with  the  ferocity  of  wolves. 
The  fur  trajle  wants  to  slaughter  the  prices  of  the  unprimes  off  the 
market. 

The  trapper  may  ship  direct  to  the  fur  auction  with  his  name 
tagged  to  the  back  of  the  pelt  and  a  game  warden's  stamp,  for 
in  most  of  the  States  and  Provinces,  the  trapper  has  had  a  license 
and  conformed  with  the  local  law ;  or  he  may  sell  to  a  local  trader, 
who  ships  to  the  big  auction.  For  the  fur  so  shipped  forward  a 
certain  advance  is  made,  rendered  possible  by  the  banks  financing 
the  fur  auction  corporations.  For  selling  the  furs  a  commission  is 
charged  of  5  to  6%  with  a  discount.  All  transactions  are  necessarily 
on  a  cash  basis ;  for  the  furs  sold  in  April  must  afford  the  trader 
back  on  the  hunting  field  cash  resources  to  buy  his  goods  for  trade 
the  following  autumn.  Each  of  the  fur  auction  corporations  is 
financed  by  subscription  to  a  joint  stock  company,  which  can  pledge 
its  joint  stock  to  the  banks  for  credit  to  advance  a  percentage  of 
purchase  money  to  the  individual  shipper.  All  this  is  to  facilitate 
quick  action  in  a  big  wide  area  of  a  complicated,  highly  complex 
and  technical  industry. 

Each  trader  if  he  thinks  his  pelts  are  being  knocked  down  at  a 
price  too  low  has  the  privilege  of  buying  in  his  own  goods ;  but 
once  the  hammer  has  knocked  down,  the  bids  are  irrevocable. 

For  a  month  before  the  auction,  buyers  from  every  part  of  the 
world  frequent  the  storerooms.     Dressed  in  linen  dusters,  they  are 


20  THE  FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

escorted  by  attendants  also  dressed  in  linen  dusters  from  room  to 
room  and  shelf  to  shelf  where  they  can  personally  inspect  the  furs 
and  take  their  numbers,  grade  and  classification.  The  prospective 
bidder  is  then  given  a  book  of  catalogued  furs  in  which  he  can  mark 
what  he  intends  to  buy. 

Promptly  at  9,  the  sale  opens  in  some  large  assembly  hall. 
No  more  are  the  furs  visible  at  the  auction  as  they  were  in  the  old 
Fur  Fair  days.  When  only  $500,000  of  furs  would  be  sold  by  a  com- 
pany in  London  in  a  year  in  three  different  sales,  it  was  possible  to 
display  the  goods;  but  with  one  single  auction  now  totalling  $12,- 
000,000  to  $27,000,000  this  is  no  longer  possible. 

The  sale  is  not  noisy  and  clamorous.  It  is  silent,  tense,  swift. 
An  electric  sign  behind  the  auctioneer's  head  announces  the  number 
of  the  catalogue.  The  buyers  open  their  books  to  the  number. 
We'll  say  it  is  fitch.  The  classification  is  so  fine,  there  is  no  mis- 
taking the  quaHty  and  grade  and  age.  Behind  the  auctioneer  stands 
"a  spotter."  At  each  side  of  him  sits  "a  spotter."  The  auctioneer 
names  a  possible  price.  A  bidder  lifts  his  finger,  or  his  pencil,  or 
nods  his  head  that  he  will  buy  at  that  figure.  The  auctioneer  calls 
the  figure.  A  man  to  right  or  left  outbids  by  a  lift  of  his  finger,  or 
nod  of  the  head.  The  spotter  shouts  "up,"  "up."  A  whack  of 
the  gavel ;   and  the  fur  is  gone. 

In  this  way  have  furs  to  the  value  of  $2,000,000  been  sold  in  a 
day,  and  furs  to  the  value  of  $27,000,000  sold  in  a  week.  I  look  back 
over  the  reports  of  the  great  fur  auctions  of  London  for  a  term  of 
years.  The  sales  total  37,000  to  60,000  coon  at  Nesbitt's  in  1905 
and  1912;  739,000  to  658,000  muskrat;  124,000  to  326,000 
skunk.  Or  I  look  over  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company — 1855: 
136,513  marten;  55,740  mink;  346,955  muskrat;  480  silver  fox; 
15,000  wolf;  5000  lynx;  1500  ermine;  5800  squirrel.  Then  I 
look  over  the  sales  of  1920 :  London,  66,000  coon ;  661,000  muskrat ; 
1,100,000  skunk;  18,000  marten;  38,000  mink;  700  silver  fox; 
80,000  wolf;  700  lynx;  200,000  ermine;  almost  1,000,000  squirrel. 
Or  the  St.  Louis  sales  in  May,  1920:   22,500  marten,  97,000  mink, 


FUR  MARKETS  OF  WORLD  21 

1,100,000  muskrat;  1,500  silver  fox;  400,000  skunk;  34,000  lynx 
and  cat;    295,000  ermine;    1,200,000  squirrel. 

Look  at  the  figures  and  compare  them. 

The  sale  is  very  swift  and  very  tense ;  but  it  doesn't  look  to  me 
as  if  furs  were  decreasing.  Also  considering  the  first  fur  auction  was 
held  in  St.  Louis  in  1913,  the  first  in  New  York  in  1916,  and  the  first 
in  Montreal  in  1920,  it  looks  as  if  the  Fur  Fairs  had  come  back  to 
America  to  stay. 

What  brought  the  Fur  Fairs,  or  fur  auctions  back  to  America  ? 

Primarily,  the  War;  but  even  if  there  had  been  no  War,  the 
treaty  stopping  Pelagic  Sealing  would  have  forced  a  shift  in  world 
fur  markets.  It  will  be  recalled  when  Pelagic  Sealing  was  stopped 
that  the  American  Government  took  hold  of  the  care  and  manage- 
ment and  preservation  of  seal  life  on  the  Pribilof  Islands.  In  order 
to  preserve  the  female  life  and  the  pup  life,  it  was  necessary  to  kill 
a  certain  number  of  the  riotous  young  males  each  year.  These 
skins  were  sent  to  St.  Louis  to  be  sold  by  public  auction.  They  were 
ultimately  dressed  and  dyed  in  St.  Louis  by  the  same  processes  used 
in  the  famous  seal-dyeing  establishments  of  London,  which  made 
the  London-dyed  seal  renowned  for  a  hundred  years.  This  is  a 
long  story  and  one  that  will  be  told  by  itself.  St.  Louis  had  from 
its  very  birth  been  a  great  fur  centre ;  so  the  auctions  were  planned 
by  the  renowned  firm  of  Funston  Brothers. 

Simultaneously  came  the  War.  These  convergings  of  different 
factors  to  the  same  end  are  what  one  grows  to  regard  as  destiny. 
With  the  War,  shipping  from  Australia  and  Russia  via  Suez  and  the 
North  Sea  was  cut  off.  A  lot  of  12,000,000  Australian  rabbits  came 
into  Canada  and  were  sold  as  Canadian  fur.  Then  the  Australian 
rabbits  came  to  the  American  market  in  a  deluge  of  millions. 

Simultaneously  with  the  coming  of  the  Australian  rabbit,  Ameri- 
can munition  men  and  coke  producers  and  dye  manufacturers  were 
perfecting  American  dyes  to  oust  German  control.  Fur  dyers  were 
brought  over  from  London  and  France  and  Leipzic ;  and  American 
firms  began  turning  out  Hudson  seals  and  Alaskan  seals  and  electric 


22  THE  FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

seals  fine  as  any  ever  turned  out  in  Europe.  That  being  the  case 
—  the  trade  asked  —  why  ship  milUons  of  American  muskrats 
undressed  to  Austria  and  Germany  to  be  shipped  back  dressed  and 
manufactured  for  the  American  to  buy  ? 

Why  not  dress  and  manufacture  here,  and  so  increase  profits 
all  round  here  from  the  trapper  to  the  most  exclusive  retail 
shop  ? 

But  Kamchatka  and  Siberia  have  the  rarest  furs  in  the  world ; 
and  they  desperately  needed  American  gold  during  the  War  years ; 
so  their  furs  also  came  pouring  into  American  markets  via  the  Pacific. 
So  did  Japanese  furs,  and  during  the  War,  there  was  suchia  slump  in 
the  prices  of  Canadian  furs  in  London  and  Paris  that  they,  too, 
began  pouring  into  the  American  market. 

American  fur  auctions  were  not  devised  by  any  genius.  They 
were  forced  by  fate. 

So  great  were  the  profits  from  direct  sales  here,  there  was  one  de- 
leterious reaction.  This  country  was  oozing  with  newly  rich 
money.  Prices  jumped  75%  ;  then  100% ;  just  about  the  time  the 
Texas  oil  boom  began  to  subside.  The  gentry,  who  feed  like  car- 
rion birds  on  the  corpses  of  all  bones,  rushed  into  the  fur  game. 
Many  of  them  had  more  experience  in  playing  the  ponies,  or  in 
Seventh  Avenue  bar  rooms,  than  with  furs.  Certain  that  fur  prices 
were  going  to  jump  another  100%,  they  dashed  off  to  the  Canadian 
North-west,  to  Siberia,  to  Japan,  to  Kamchatka,  to  South  America ; 
and  they  began  paying  ready  money  for  raw  furs  out  like  water. 
The  trapper  looked  at  this  new  specimen  in  the  fur  trade ;  and  he 
raised  the  price  of  muskrat  from  c^o^  to  $5.  Where  the  pelt  was  a 
good  one,  the  buyer  got  his  money  back  at  the  fur  auction,  with 
perhaps  $1.50  to  the  good,  which  is  a  handsome  profit  if  you  have 
20,000  good  skins.  Where  the  skins  were  no  good,  the  buyer  got 
about  $4.50  of  experience  for  each  pelt;  and  so  did  the  bank  that 
backed  him. 

There  is  not  the  slightest  doubt  that  the  fur  auctions  of  1920  have 
driven  this  class  of  shoestring  operators  out  of  the  fur  trade  for 


FUR  MARKETS   OF  WORLD  23 

good.     Good  skins  never  brought  such  high  prices,  but  poor  skins 
brought  just  as  signally  low  prices.- 

But  besides  the  sales  and  the  War  and  the  dyes  being  influences 
to  bring  the  fur  sales  back  permanently  to  American  centres  was 
another  vital  reason,  which  was  really  the  result  of  the  enormous 
proportions  which  the  trade  had  attained.  During  one  year  white 
fox  has  fluctuated  as  much  as  from  $6.50  to  $20.  We'll  suppose 
20,000  white  fox  have  come  down  from  Canada  to  New  York 
billed  through  to  London.  Owing  to  the  War,  shipment  is  delayed. 
Those  fox  could  have  been  sold  in  New  York  for  $20  each,  but  they 
remained  paying  storage  in  New  York.  When  finally,  they  reached 
London,  the  price  was  its  very  worst  —  lower  than  the  trapper  had 
been  paid.  There  was  nothing  to  do  but  withdraw  those  fox  from 
the  market  and  put  them  in  storage  till  the  price  went  up  ;  and  this 
locked  up  a  profitable  turnover  of  $400,000.  The  same  story  could 
be  told  of  beaver,  of  opossum,  of  silver  fox,  of  muskrat,  of  kolinsky. 
European  fur  company  shares  suffered  a  drop  that  was  a  thud. 
Beaver  that  was  $6.50  in  1917  was  $20  in  1919  in  the  United  States, 
when  the  price  of  beaver  was  off  75%  in  London. 

The  story  of  opossum  in  1915  is  a  case  in  point.  Six  hundred 
thousand  opossum  in  all  were  sold.  That  is  a  normal  supply  for 
two  years  ;  but  that  year  cloaks  and  suits  were  using  opossum  trim- 
mings. Opossum  that  was  35)!f  in  August  in  New  York  was  $1  by 
September.  If  the  American  opossum  had  been  shipped  to  London 
for  sale  the  following  March,  it  would  have  missed  the  191 5  special 
trade  demand ;  and  by  1916,  the  trimmings  had  shifted  from  opos- 
sum to  fox  and  downy  lynx  and  badger  effect. 

It  need  not  for  a  moment  be  thought  that  Europe  is  going  to  let 
the  fur  market  go  to  America  without  a  struggle.  This  year, 
the  prices  in  London  have  been  uniformly  20  to  50%  lower  than  in 
America ;  though  just  as  many  buyers  were  present  at  the  London 
auctions  as  at  the  Montreal  and  New  York  auctions.  It  may  have 
been  because  Europe  is  short  of  money.  It  may  have  been  because 
Europe  is  always  a  market  for  a  certain  class  of  furs  and  America 


24  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

a  market  for  another  class  of  furs.  But  it  also  may  have  been  as 
one  of  the  conservative  companies  said  —  "We  can  afford  to  lose 
our  dividends  for  a  few  years  to  bring  the  fur  markets  of  the  world 
back  to  Europe."  Will  they  ever  go  back  to  Europe .''  Some  will. 
Europe  will  always  be  the  best  market  for  sea  otter,  for  Australian 
and  Chinese  and  Japanese  furs,  for  Canadian  otter  which  finds  its 
highest  price  in  Russia,  for  Persian  lamb  and  broadtail  and  krimmer 
and  karakul,  for  Russian  sable  and  marten  and  the  sorts  of  furs 
used  for  summer  wear  in  a  damp  cool  climate ;  but  for  general  utility 
and  general  beauty  furs  such  as  fox,  Alaska  seal,  Hudson  seal,  mink, 
beaver,  nutria,  wolf,  muskrat,  America  has  captured  the  fur  market 
to  hold  it  for  all  time. 


CHAPTER  III 
THINGS  EVERY  WOMAN,  WHO  BUYS  FURS,  SHOULD  KNOW 

America  is  to-day  literally  fur  frenzied. 

Newly  rich,  post-graduate  rich  and  the  new  poor,  impoverished 
by  the  High  Cost  of  Living,  while  professional  remuneration  has 
stayed  at  pre- War  levels,  —  every  class  and  layer  of  the  social 
world  has  caught  the  fad  and  affects  furs. 

For  three  years  now,  summer  furs  have  been  the  fashion  in  every 
part  of  America,  not  only  neck  pieces  but  hat  trimmings  and  edg- 
ings for  elaborate  gowns ;  and  the  fashion  shows  not  a  sign  of 
abating.  Those  who  cannot  afford  real  silver  fox,  or  sable  at  $1000 
per,  buy  white  fox  dyed  in  imitation  of  silver  fox,  or  Chinese  goat 
dyed  in  imitation  of  no  fox  that  ever  was  on  land  or  sea  —  and  are 
happy;  and  swell  the  swelling  chorus  for  furs,  more  furs,  and  yet 
more  furs. 

"Of  all  the  accursed  follies  of  fashion,"  declared  a  great  Canadian 
fur  authority  to  me,  "this  whim  for  summer  furs  is  the  silliest  and 
the  most  destructive  of  wild  life.  I  wish  every  time  you  have  the 
chance,  you  would  hit  the  fashion  on  the  head  as  you  would  hit  a 
rattlesnake.  If  it  lasts  for  ten  years,  there  will  not  be  left  a  fur- 
bearing  animal  in  its  natural  state.  Fox  and  sable  and  mink  will 
be  extinct  as  the  buffalo,  to  be  found  only  on  fur  farms  and  govern- 
ment preserves.  Whole  tribes  of  Indians  will  die  out  for  lack  of 
hunting  ground ;  and  the  wild  game  life  of  America  will  have  passed 
forever." 

"Extinction  of  furs !  Fiddlesticks  !"  declared  another  great  fur 
trader,  who  has  been  buyer  for  one  of  the  largest  firms  in  the  world 

25 


26  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

for  twenty  years.  "Summer  furs  are  only  a  fad  in  America  and  can 
never  last.  In  certain  fashion  centres  of  Europe,  they  are  neces- 
sary, because  the  houses  have  no  furnaces  and  are  mostly  brick 
and  stone  and  owing  to  close  proximity  to  the  sea  are  chill  and  damp. 
During  the  War,  tens  of  thousands  of  our  people  went  across  and 
saw  fashionable  European  women  beautifully  gowned  in  becoming 
furs ;  and  they  came  back  to  America  and  called  for  the  same  fash- 
ions here.  Besides  furs  are  the  most  becoming  frame  any  human  face 
—  old  or  young  —  can  wear.  There  is  a  fur  for  every  face.  There 
is  a  fur  for  every  color  of  complexion  and  hair.  There  is  no  face 
they  do  not  improve  and  soften.  They  set  out  the  color  of  a  young 
face  and  they  soften  the  harshness  of  an  old  face.  They  give  that 
film  of  beauty  to  a  face,  which  an  artist  knows  how  to  impart  to 
a  portrait.  Why  was  Gainsborough  the  pet  of  society  as  an  artist  ? 
Because  he  made  the  portrait  of  every  sitter  a  beauty. 

"It  is  the  same  with  furs.  They  impart  the  most  insidious 
flattery  to  every  human  face.  But  there  is  a  point  of  saturation 
even  to  flattery,  where  it  loses  its  potency  from  being  applied  too 
strongly.  We  are  reaching  that  point  in  furs.  No  matter  how 
much  an  artist  flatters  in  a  portrait,  no  woman  has  her  portrait 
painted  by  the  same  artist  more  than  once.  A  woman  buys  a  good 
fur  coat ;  but  she  doesn't  buy  it  every  year.  The  same  with  a  sable 
or  chinchilla  neck  piece.  She  gets  one;  but  she  doesn't  get  two. 
Now  Americans  have  had  a  lot  of  money  during  these  War  years. 
A  lot  of  people  have  had  a  lot  of  money,  who  never  had  money  to 
spend  before ;  and  they  have  been  spending  it ;  but  they  can't 
spend  the  same  money  twice ;  and  we  as  fur  merchants  don't  look 
to  see  the  mad  demand  for  furs  keep  up  to  its  present  level. 

"Besides  fashion  changes  every  year.  One  year  the  whim  is 
mink  and  kolinsky.  The  next  year,  it  is  fox,  silver  fox,  cross  fox, 
every  kind  of  fox  and  imitation  of  fox.  We  are  in  the  midst  of  the 
fox  craze  now.  Or  else  the  dyeing  of  muskrat  in  imitation  of  AJaska 
seal  becomes  so  fine  that  our  own  fur  dressers  on  a  bet  of  an  Alaska 
seal  coat  if  they  were  right  could  not  distinguish  the  'Hudson  seal ' 


WHAT  WOMEN  FUR  BUYERS  SHOULD  KNOW    27 

or  muskrat,  from  the  Alaska  seal ;  and  muskrat  pelts  jump  in  price 
from  12  and  50  cents  to  ^4  and  $5. 

"Then  comes  a  whim  of  fashion.     Mrs.  B doesn't  want  a 

Hudson  seal  coat  because  her  social  rival  Mrs.  C has  one;  or 

some  of  the  other  reasonless  whims.  Then  a  lot  of  shoestring  buy- 
ers, who  don't  know  anything  more  about  the  fine  qualities  and  highly 
technical  points  of  furs  than  they  did,  when  they  rushed  into  gold 
brick  mining  in  worthless  gold  shares,  or  oil  wildcatting  in  wells 
that  never  pumped  a  barrel  of  oil  —  get  stung,  get  badly  stung ; 
and  quit  buying  at  crazy  prices.  When  gold-briquetting  and  wa- 
tered oil  failed  these  gentry,  they  jumped  into  furs  and  rushed  off  to 
the  wilds  of  Canada  and  Siberia  and  Kamchatka,  and  because  a 
fur  like  muskrat  or  kolinsky  had  been  high  in  New  York  when  they 
jumped  into  the  game,  they  paid  the  wildest  prices  to  the  native 
fur  trapper  in  his  native  haunt  —  were  going  to  'bust  the  old  com- 
panies' and  all  that,  you  know.  Well,  they  paid  ^5  for  muskrat 
for  which  the  old  fur  dealers  —  wise  old  wolves  —  would  only  pay 
50  cents. 

"But  here's  the  stumbling  point  to  such  tenderfeet  in  the  fur 
game.  Your  man  new  to  the  game  buys,  we'll  say  in  the  winter 
of  1919.  It  is  spring  of  1920  before  he  can  get  the  furs  so  bought 
out  to  market ;  and  it  is  the  fall  of  1920  before  those  furs  are  dressed, 
dyed  and  made  up  for  the  retail  market.  By  that  time,  fashion  has 
shifted  from  muskrat  and  seals  to  foxes  and  sables.  Every  man 
buying  those  furs  on  a  gamble  is  stung ;  and  the  next  season  won't 
touch  muskrat  with  tongs.  The  Indians  are  quick  to  feel  the  re- 
action ;  and  don't  trap  muskrat  so  hard.  The  fur  trade  lets  up 
on  muskrat ;   and  the  muskrat  have  a  chance  to  multiply. 

"Now  the  old  established  companies  play  the  game  in  another 
way  —  play  a  longer  suit  if  you  like  to  put  it  that  way.  The  min- 
ute they  discover  the  fashion  has  changed  for  a  certain  fur,  they 
discourage  the  trappers  from  going  after  that  fur.  They  lower 
prices ;  and  if  they  are  caught  with  a  big  supply  of  a  certain  fur, 
when  the  fashion  has  changed,  they  put  them  in  cold  storage  and 


28  THE  FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

don't  glut  the  market  and  don't  buy  any  more  of  that  fur.  The  slow- 
ing up  is  felt  all  down  the  line  from  my  lady  on  Fifth  Avenue,  or 
Hyde  Park,  London,  to  a  lonely  Indian  on  Hudson  Bay.  I,  myself, 
was  once  caught  with  100,000  beautiful  muskrats  for  which  I  had 
paid  50  to  90  cents.  I  could  not  sell  them  for  90  cents  and  had  to 
hold  them  for  five  years  and  feed  them  out  to  the  trade  gradually. 
I  know  instances  where  fur  buyers  have  been  loaded  with  miUions 
of  pounds  of  rabbit;  and  'near  seal'  took  a  slump,  or  there  was  a 
warm  winter,  or  there  were  hard  times,  and  those  Australian  and 
Belgian  rabbits  almost  ruined  the  fur  buyer,  ate  his  head  off  in  in- 
terest charges,  just  as  the  live  rabbit  had  become  a  pest  in  Austraha. 

"Of  all  the  world's  industries,  fur  trading  is  the  oldest,  the  trick- 
iest, the  most  technical,  subject  to  the  most  shifts  of  whim  and 
finance.  It  is  a  game  for  wise  old  wolves,  not  new  tenderfeet  and 
fly-by-night  gamblers. 

"Mind  I  do  not  say  we  do  not  need  to  conserve  furs.  We  do. 
We  are  doing  a  selling  trade  —  local  and  foreign  —  in  furs  to-day  of 
from  70  million  to  100  million  dollars,  where  we  were  doing  a  fur 
trade  of  only  17  to  20  milHons  before  the  War.  With  fox  skins  selling 
all  the  way  from  $200  for  cross  fox  to  $1225  for  silver  —  as  they  did 
the  other  day  in  Montreal  —  where  they  used  to  sell  for  from  $15 
down  to  $5  or  up  to  $200,  women  who  buy  furs  should  exercise 
the  same  care  and  discrimination  and  judgment  and  knowledge  as  a 
connoisseur  of  rarest  jewels.  Furs  are  going  to  be  just  as  much  a 
mark  of  good  taste  as  jewels  or  objects  of  art.  Like  jewels,  you  do 
not  buy  them  for  one  season,  but  for  a  life  time,  and  if  you  take  proper 
care  of  them,  you  could  buy  them  for  two  or  three  generations  of 
wearers. 

"Get  this  point  clear — reputable  fur  dealers  have  no  more  desire 
to  sail  under  false  colors  than  reputable  jewellers.  When  furs  are 
dyed  imitations  of  rare  furs,  the  reputable  dealer  tells  the  customer 
so.  Hudson  seal  is  dyed,  especially  treated  very  fine  muskrat. 
Near  seal  is  dyed,  especially  treated  coney  and  rabbit.  Black  sable 
is  lustrous  skunk.     Fisher  defies  imitation  but  is  often  mistaken  by 


WHAT  WOMEN  FUR  BUYERS  SHOULD  KNOW    29 

the  buyer  for  fine  black  fox ;  but  that  is  the  buyer's  fault,  not  the 
dealer's. 

"There  are  just  certain  things  that  every  woman,  who  buys 
furs,  should  know,  which  the  dealer  wants  her  to  know ;  and  when 
she  knows  those  things  she  will  love  furs  as  much  as  jewels,  and  take 
such  care  of  them  she  will  be  as  great  a  conserver  of  wild  life  as  the 
most  ardent  lover  of  game." 

What,  then,  are  the  things,  that  every  woman,  who  buys  furs, 
should  know  ? 

First,  what  does  she  want  them  for  ? 

To  improve  her  apparel,  of  course,  and  set  off  her  natural  style 
or  charm ;  but  is  she  to  wear  the  fur  as  a  light  neck  piece  with  an 
evening  gown,  or  as  a  throat  protection  collar  on  the  street,  or  as  a 
hard  wearing  utility  garment .''  There  are  furs  for  every  face  and 
furs  for  every  purpose;  but  naturally  for  rough  wear  motoring, 
or  in  wet  storms,  you  would  not  choose  the  same  fur  as  for  the  wrap 
round  bare  neck  in  evening  gown  going  from  one  heated  room  to 
another.  You  can  choose  the  same  color  but  you  would  not  choose 
the  same  pelt.  For  instance,  in  soft  grays,  opossum  or  gray 
krimmer  give  you  a  rough,  durable  fur  in  gray  suitable  for  coarse 
usage  outdoors.  Gray  squirrel  gives  you  a  fragile  fur  suitable  for 
outdoor  or  indoor  wear,  but  suitable  only  for  gentle  wear  and  tear. 
Chinchilla  and  mole  give  you  a  gray  fine  in  sheen  as  dew  in  sun- 
light suitable  only  for  elaborate  evening  wear  with  the  greatest 
care  and  no  wear  and  tear.  Opossum  and  krimmer  are  cheap. 
Gray  squirrel  is  dear  and  fragile  and  impossible  of  imitation  or  dye. 
Chinchilla  and  mole  may  be  dyed,  that  is,  tipped  by  hand  where 
the  edged  seams  meet,  but  no  art  of  man  can  imitate  or  reproduce 
both  the  lustre  and  pansy  softness  of  these  almost  velvet  furs. 

Chinchilla  is  costly.  One  can  understand  why.  It  has  become 
so  scarce  three-quarters  of  South  American  countries  from  which 
it  comes  have  declared  a  closed  season  for  five  or  six  years ;  so  that 
chinchilla  has  almost  disappeared  even  as  edging  for  hats,  or  evening 
gowns ;  but  why  should  mole  be  so  dear  ?    Mole  are  not  scarce  and 


30  THE  FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

never  can  be  scarce.  They  hide  in  the  earth  and  multiply  almost 
as  prolific  as  rats,  and  come  to  the  market  in  millions.  Why  is  a 
moleskin  wrap  costly  as  a  tiara  of  jewels,  or  a  good  moleskin  neck 
piece  in  the  same  class  as  the  necklace  it  conceals  ^ 

Consider  for  a  moment  1  The  little  mole  burrow  has  been 
turned  up  by  a  boy  plowing.  He  succeeds  in  killing  and  skinning 
the  mole,  pickling  the  skin  and  sending  It  In  good  condition  to  the 
fur  buyer.  It  now  has  to  be  fleshed  and  cleaned  —  that  Is,  tiny  par- 
ticles of  fat  or  flesh  adhering  to  the  Inside  of  the  skin  must  be  scraped 
off.  The  mole  skin  Is  fragile  as  oiled  paper,  especially  at  this  stage, 
when  it  has  not  been  softened  ;  and  whether  the  fleshing  be  done  by 
hand  with  the  smoothest  and  bluntest  of  bone  scrapers  such  as  the 
Indians  use,  or  a  knife  such  as  professional  skin  dressers  use,  one 
false  strike,  one  careless  look  away  from  the  job  may  ruin  a  skin. 

This  Is  all  hand  work  and  it  takes  400  to  600  skins  to  make  a  lady's 
evening  wrap.  The  skin  Is  next  cleaned  —  a  process  that  will  be 
described  further  on.  The  skin  side  must  now  be  dipped  to  dye  the 
edges  where  the  seams  meet;  otherwise  a  raw  pelt  would  show  up 
at  each  of  the  1600  seams  in  the  coat.  They  call  this  "topping." 
Now  each  mole  skin  must  be  cut  even  at  the  edges  to  be  sewed  into 
squares  —  another  1600  hand  operations.  The  sewing  comes  — 
another  1600  hand  operations.  The  hand  operations  now  total, 
400  sklnnlngs  and  pickllngs,  400  fleshings,  1600  tipplngs  with  dye, 
1600  cuttings  of  the  edges,  1600  seams  sewed,  —  In  all  5600  hand 
operations.  No  lapidarist  polishing  lapis  lazuli  could  do  more.  But 
the  dresser  has  not  finished  with  his  mole  skins  yet.  They  must 
be  dampened  and  fitted  to  curved  models  to  give  the  skin  a  circular 
shape  for  the  human  figure  —  all  this  before  the  manufacturer  has 
yet  touched  It  for  a  coat. 

One  sometimes  sees  a  jeweller  caress  jewels  almost  lovingly. 
Could  the  fair  wearer  of  furs  know  what  they  have  cost  in  human 
effort,  she  would  caress  them  just  as  lovingly  and  keep  them  just 
as  carefully,  if  not  in  a  glass  case  then  In  cedar  boxes,  or  cold  storage, 
moth  proof,  heat  proof  and  damp  proof. 


WHAT  WOMEN  FUR  BUYERS  SHOULD  KNOW    31 

It  is  quite  obvious  that  any  woman,  who  wears  the  rare  furs  — 
mole,  chinchilla,  gray  squirrel  —  for  rough  outdoors  usage  sim- 
ply shows  her  own  ignorance  of  furs.  It  is  like  the  shipyard  worker 
in  war-wage  days,  who  ordered  an  ^i  100  Circassian  cased  baby  grand 
piano  placed  in  his  wife's  kitchen  in  a  tenement  so  she  could  try  out 
tunes  while  frying  sausages. 

The  first  question  is  —  what  is  the  fur  wanted  for  ?  And  that 
brings  up  the  question  of  durability.  Furs  are  sorted,  stand- 
ardized and  classified  in  grades  just  as  finely  for  durability  as  lumber 
Is  In  building,  or  wheat  Is  graded  for  flour;  and  when  a  woman  is 
paying  from  $200  up  to  $1000  for  a  fur  garment,  she  should  know 
these  standards  and  grades  just  as  carefully  as  a  man  knows  his  job 
when  he  buys  lumber  or  grain. 

Before  going  Into  the  durability  of  furs,  you  must  understand 
exactly  what  fur  Is.     There  are  three  parts  to  all  fur. 

There  Is  the  skin,  the  same  as  a  man's  skin,  next  to  the  flesh. 

Then,  there  Is  the  pelage,  thick  as  wool  on  some  animals  like  the 
Persian  lambs,  or  beaver,  or  nutria,  or  otter,  or  seals,  or  muskrats, 
or  rabbits. 

Then  there  are  the  rough  long  upper  hairs,  whiskers  you  can  call 
them  if  you  like,  which  are  always  plucked  from  the  seals  and  beavers 
and  nutrias,  which  are  cut  down  even  on  the  muskrats  and  otters, 
and  are  never  cut  but  are  regarded  as  the  chief  beauty  of  the  foxes 
and  fishers  and  sables  and  martens  and  skunks. 

Now  get  these  next  points  clear  ! 

There  is  only  one  way  to  tell  a  dyed  from  an  undyed  fur,  an  imi- 
tation from  a  true  fur  —  only  one  way,  which  will  not  fool  a  fur 
trader  wise  as  a  wolf,  himself ;  and  that  is  the  color  of  the  under  skin. 
The  natural  color  of  the  under  skin  Is  flesh  white,  not  golden,  nor 
yellow.  Every  other  test  will  defy  the  finest  detection.  Cases  are 
on  record  where  men  forty  years  in  the  business  were  fooled  when 
offered  the  present  of  a  coat  for  their  wives  if  they  could  tell  the 
difference  between  Alaska  seal,  which  has  to  be  dyed,  and  Hudson 
seal,  or  muskrat,  which  also  has  to  be  dyed.     Here  the  infallible 


32  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

test  was  lacking,  because  both  skins  showed  up  golden;  and  the 
white  test  failed,  and  the  fur  dresser  chose  a  $300  muskrat  coat  for 
his  wife,  when  he  might  have  had  a  $2000  Alaska  seal. 

Now  granted  a  woman  buyer  knows  the  difference  between  a 
dyed  skin  and  an  undyed  skin.  That  won't  help  her  as  between  the 
Alaska  seal  and  the  Hudson  seal,  in  the  case  of  Persian  lamb,  which 
is  born  jet  black  In  pelage  but  has  to  be  given  a  brush  coat  of  black 
for  lustre.  Well-dyed  skins  will  never  suffer  from  the  dye ;  but  skins 
beautifully  dyed  may  have  too  much  acid  in  the  dye,  which  will  in 
the  course  of  five  or  six  years  eat  through  the  pelage  of  fur  into  the 
hide  and  weaken  it.  How  is  a  buyer  to  know  a  well-dyed  skin  from 
a  poorly-dyed  skin,  granted  both  have  equally  fine  lustre  ?  This  is 
an  important  question  when  you  are  buying  a  coat  valued  at  from 
$1000  to  $I2,CKX).  If  you  bought  a  horse  of  that  value,  you  would 
have  a  connoisseur  look  him  over.  The  dealer's  test  is  this.  Gently 
stretch  the  dyed  skin.  If  it  stretches  soft  as  the  skin  on  the  back 
of  your  hand,  it  is  well  dyed.  If  it  cracks,  or  emits  a  little  feel  like 
a  seam  about  to  rip,  look  out !  It  has  been  fleshed  thin,  or  hard- 
ened in  the  dyeing  and  will  rip.  Just  now  it  is  reenforced  by  rubber, 
or  padding,  or  false  skin ;  but  some  day  when  you  are  in  a  hurry  and 
jerk  your  arm,  there  will  be  a  rip  and  seam  will  show ;  and  it  will 
not  be  the  fault  of  your  tailor.  It  will  be  away  back  in  the  curing  and 
dyeing  of  the  skin. 

As  to  durability.  It  hardly  needs  to  be  told  that  an  undyed 
skin  will  always  be  more  durable  than  a  dyed  skin,  and  the  skin  of  a 
strong  tough  animal  like  bear,  or  wolf,  or  fisher,  or  otter,  or  buffalo, 
more  durable  than  a  fragile  animal  like  fox,  or  muskrat,  or  mole, 
or  squirrel,  or  chinchilla. 

Next  to  skin  In  durability,  consider  the  pelage,  or  thick  fur 
proper.  Fur  that  has  glossy  lustre  and  is  really  a  fur  as  distinct 
from  wool  is  more  durable  than  fur  that  has  the  feel  of  wool  or  down ; 
so  you  get  otter  and  skunk  and  fisher  and  wolf  and  coon  and  bear  as 
more  durable  than  either  Alaska  or  Hudson  seal,  or  beaver  or  nutria, 
or  fox,  or  sable,  or  mink,  or  marten.    The  lustre  furs  do  not  mat  aii4 


Hudson  Seal  with  Skunk  and  Bear  Trimmings, 


Real  and  Imitation  Silver  Fox  — 
Back,  of  True   Silver 


Courtesy  Gottlieb  Company. 

Note  the  Dimpled   Strip  Down  Centre 
Compare  the  Dyed  Silver 


WHAT  WOMEN  FUR  BUYERS  SHOULD  KNOW    33 

soil  in  rain  and  fog  and  raw  sea  weather.  They  do  not  fade.  This 
is  one  of  the  great  faults  of  beaver,  which  is  one  of  the  toughest  and 
most  durable  of  furs.  It  fades  in  strong  sunlight  and  mats  in  damp. 
It  probably  does  so  because  the  beaver  originally  lived  in  shade, 
and  the  outer  coarse  fur  which  has  been  plucked  protected  the  under 
pelage  in  his  aquatic  life  and  habits.  This  also  applies  to  the  best 
muskrats,  whether  sold  as  Hudson  seal  or  imitation  mink. 

In  durability,  then,  as  to  fur  proper,  the  unplucked  fur  is  far 
more  durable  than  the  plucked  fur.  This  places  unplucked  otter 
at  the  head  of  all  furs  as  the  most  durable  pelt.  Plucked  otter  is 
sold  dyed  for  Alaska  seal,  or  for  beaver  and  nutria.  It  is  usually 
the  rubbed  belly  of  the  animal,  or  a  skin  taken  out  of  season  and  not 
prime  and  so  cannot  be  sold  as  unplucked  otter. 

Next  comes  the  durability  of  the  furs  with  the  long  upper  hairs. 
From  the  beavers  and  the  seals,  they  are  plucked.  On  the  musk- 
rats  and  rabbits  and  otters,  they  are  evened  down;  but  in  the 
foxes  and  the  fishers  and  the  skunks  and  the  martens  and  the  sables 
and  the  mink,  they  are  left  as  the  chief  beauty.  It  is  the  long  upper 
hair  that  gives  to  sables  the  almost  purplish  vapory  sheen ;  and  to 
mink,  the  appearance  of  almost  a  veil ;  and  to  skunk  and  fisher 
almost  a  velvet  softness,  and  to  fox  its  chief  beauty.  It  is  the  long 
hair  of  the  fox  frames  the  face  in  a  soft  aureole  and  takes  out  the 
harsh  lines.  It  is  the  long  hair  has  the  tip  of  silver  in  the  fox.  Fox 
would  not  be  fox  without  the  long  hair ;  but  with  the  two  exceptions 
of  fisher  and  skunk,  long-haired  furs  are  not  durable.  The  long  hairs 
scuff  at  the  neck  and  show  wear  first.  If  it  is  an  expensive  fur  like 
sable,  marten,  silver  fox,  mink,  the  scuffed  fur  should  yearly  be 
taken  to  the  fur  dealer  to  be  redressed,  just  as  a  lover  of  jewels  takes 
her  diamonds  and  pearls  once  a  year  to  the  jewellers  to  have  them 
cleaned. 

Just  here  let  it  be  said  that  fisher  is  the  only  long-haired  fur  that 
cannot  be  dyed  into  an  imitation  of  something  else.  That  is  why 
it  has  gone  up  in  price  from  ^10  and  $15  a  pelt  to  $148  and  $345  as 
they  sold  in  Montreal  and  New  York  and  St.  Louis  the  other  day  at 


34  THE   FUR  TRADE   OF  AMERICA 

the  great  fur  auction.  Fisher  Is  never  made  up  Into  other  furs.  It 
Is  used  by  Itself  as  a  one  piece  skin  for  the  neck,  or  fur  muffs ;  and 
the  depth  of  its  long  hairs  and  pelage  Is  such,  a  woman  can  bury  her 
hands  or  her  face  In  them.  It  is  the  most  durable  of  all  the  long- 
haired furs ;  and  it  Is  always  high  priced  and  holds  its  own  on  the 
market,  where  mink  in  twenty  years  has  fluctuated  all  the  way  from 
90  cents,  at  which  I  have  been  offered  good  mink  in  the  Rockies, 
to  $19  and  ^25  a  skin,  at  which  it  recently  sold.  Fisher  to-day 
ranks  In  the  same  class  as  Russian  sable.  The  highest  Russian  sable 
In  the  auction  of  1920  brought  $790,  the  lowest  $145 ;  the  highest 
fisher  $345,  the  lowest  ^29;  the  highest  silver  fox  $1225,  the  lowest 
$1.50  for  a  spoiled  pelt. 

In  point  of  durability,  the  fur  traders  universally  accept  this  table 
which  was  prepared  by  Marcus  Petersen ;  and  it  should  be  as  care- 
fully studied  by  every  woman  buying  furs  as  a  stock  broker  studies 
the  basic  resources  of  the  stock  he  buys  outright.  We  buy  furs 
for  keeps,  not  to  sell.     Here  is  how  they  keep  for  everyday  wear. 

Taking  the  otter  at  100  as  the  standard,  the  relative  durability 
of  some  of  the  best  known  furs  Is  shown  in  the  following  table : 

Otter  —  Natural 100     Sable  —  Natural 60 

Wolverine 100     Wolf  —  Natural 50 

Otter  —  Plucked 95      Skunk  —  Tipped 50 

Bear  —  Black  or  Brown       ...  94     Raccoon  —  Dyed 50 

Beaver  —  Natural 90  Marten  —  Baum  —  Blended       .     .  45 

Beaver  —  Plucked 85      Marten  —  Stone       45 

Seal  —  (Hair) 80     Sable  —  Blended 45 

Seal  —  (Fur) 80     Muskrat  —  Natural 45 

Seal  —  (Hair)  Dyed 75  Opossum  —  Australian      ....  40 

Leopard 75      Civet  Cat 40 

Seal  —  (Fur,  Dyed) 70     Fox  —  Natural 40 

Mink  —  Natural 70     Opossum  —  Natural 37 

Skunk  —  Natural 70     Pony  —  Russian 35 

Marten  —  Baum 65      Mink  —  Dyed 35 

Persian 65  Marten  —  Stone  —  Dyed      •     •     •  35 

Raccoon  —  Natural    .....  65  Muskrat  —  Seal       .     .     .     ...  33 

Krimmer       60     Wolf — Dyed 30 


WHAT  WOMEN  FUR  BUYERS  SHOULD  KNOW    35 

Ermine 25      Mink  —  Japan 20 

Fox  —  Dyed  Black 25  Squirrel  —  Black  —  Blended      .     .  20 

Kolinsky 25     Opossum  —  Dyed 20 

Lynx 25      Chinchilla 15 

Squirrel  —  Black 25      Goat        15 

Nutria  —  Plucked 25     Astrachan  —  Moire       10 

Coney 20     Mole        7 

Fox  —  Blue 20     Hare 5 

Marmot  —  Dyed 20     Rabbit 5 

This  does  not  mean  that  If  you  take  as  good  care  of  chinchilla  as 
of  diamonds,  it  won't  last  you  a  lifetime.  It  will ;  but  you  will  have 
to  give  it  care.  Seal  is  placed  high ;  but  seal  fades.  Beaver  is 
placed  high ;  but  beaver  mats.  Mink  and  marten  and  sable  are 
placed  high ;  but  the  long  hairs  will  scuff.  A  good  wolf  Is  better 
than  a  poor  fox,  though  it  Is  dyed  to  Imitate  fox ;  for  Its  hide  Is  tough 
and  its  pelage  thick.  A  distinction  is  made  between  natural  mink 
and  dyed  mink,  natural  marten  and  dyed  marten.  That  does  not 
mean  that  the  dyed  mink  and  marten  are  false.  It  simply  means 
that  to  make  a  wrap  or  coat,  you  have  to  match  colors  ;  and  to  make 
the  stripes  run  into  each  other,  you  often  have  to  feather  In  by  hand 
dye  to  make  the  stripes  blend ;  and  whenever  dye  Is  feathered  In, 
sooner  or  later.  It  may  be  ten  years.  It  will  eat  down  to  the  skin  and 
weaken  It.  If  It  were  not  for  this,  kolinsky  would  move  right  up  to 
the  natural  mink  class  ;  for  koHnsky  Is  a  relative  of  the  mink ;  but 
unfortunately  kolinsky  Is  a  bright  orange  yellow  color  and  has  to  be 
dyed  dark  and  that  reduces  Its  durability  75%. 

Another  point  about  kolinsky  Is  that  the  dye  takes  away  the 
metallic  lustre  and  gives  In  its  place  an  almost  catty  sllklness, 
not  the  velvet  of  chinchilla  and  squirrel  and  mole.  Nevertheless 
for  general  utility.  If  I  took  good  care  of  It,  I  would  choose  a  kolinsky 
up  next  to  otter,  or  beaver ;  and  I  was  brought  up  in  a  fur  country 
that  abhors  dyed  furs. 

Speaking  of  cats,  which  are  sold  to  the  trade  as  genet  —  and  are 
being  sold  so  plentifully  by  the  trade  just  now  that  stray  cats  no 


36  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

longer  exist  and  birds  are  multiplying  —  the  skin  of  the  cat  is  much 
more  durable  than  rabbit,  but  it  can  never  be  completely  deodorized. 
Skunk  can  be  deodorized  and  sold  as  black  sable.  Cat  can't  be  sold 
as  Hudson  seal  or  near  seal.  Dampen  it  a  little.  Bury  your  nose 
in  it  and  you  get  "cat."  Such  fine  Belgian  cats  were  recently  sold 
at  one  fur  auction  that  they  fooled  a  Hudson  Bay  man,  who  has  been 
dealing  in  fisher  for  twenty  years ;  but  he  smelt  right  down  in  the 
fur ;  and  there  was  his  good  old  friend  of  boyhood  days,  who  made 
night  hideous  in  the  backyard. 

Having  settled  in  her  own  mind  as  to  durability  and  fragility 
and  beauty,  there  are  a  lot  of  other  things  a  woman,  who  is  going  to 
outfit  herself  in  furs,  wants  to  know. 

She  is  going  to  pay  a  high  price  for  a  silver  fox,  for  a  neck  piece, 
which  she  may  wear  on  the  street,  or  over  her  shoulders  for  an  even- 
ing gown.  How  is  she  to  know  it  is  a  genuine  silver  fox,  and  not 
cross  fox  dyed,  or  Arctic  fox  dyed,  or  a  very  fine  red  fox  dyed  with 
badger  hairs  glued  in  for  silver  ? 

The  best  way  for  her  to  know  is  to  go  to  a  reputable  fur  dealer 
and  he  will  tell  her  exactly  how  to  know.  He  will  place  an  imitation 
and  a  real  side  by  side ;  and  she  will  know  at  a  glance ;  but  lacking 
faith  in  the  honesty  of  even  a  reputable  dealer,  here  are  some  infaUible 
guides  : 

The  dyed  fox  has  a  golden  skin.  The  undyed  fox  has  a  white 
skin. 

The  dyed  fox  has  to  have  a  white  tip  attached  to  his  tail.  Feel 
where  the  cord  joins  on,  or  examine  to  see  if  white  hairs  are  glued  on. 

But  a  more  puzzHng  question  is  of  a  cheaper  grade  silver  fox  skin, 
where  the  young  fox  has  rubbed  his  rump  on  trees  and  thinned  the 
thigh  furs.  The  fur  dresser  has  glued  in  white  and  gray  badger 
hairs  to  replace  the  young  silver  fox's  thin  spots.  This  does  not 
spoil  the  general  effect  of  the  silky  neck  piece  with  its  strip  of  lus- 
trous black  down  the  back  Hke  the  dimple  on  a  fat  horse;  but  it 
should  lessen  the  price  of  the  silver  fox  to  the  buyer.  Every  buyer 
of  a  silver  fox  skin  should  examine  the  thighs  for  these  signs  of  wear. 


WHAT  WOMEN  FUR  BUYERS  SHOULD  KNOW  37 

Speaking  of  badger,  it  is  a  beautiful,  downy,  deep,  gray  mottled 
fur  most  becoming  to  young  girls  and  very  reasonable  in  price.  The 
fact  it  is  used  to  imitate  silver  fox  gives  a  key  to  its  beauty.  In  a 
cold  dry  climate  like  the  Manitoba  climate,  it  is  durable.  In  a  damp 
climate  like  New  York,  it  would  mat  and  lose  its  lustre  and  soon  look 
like  weathered  wool. 

"Pointed  fox"  is  cross  fox  with  the  white  hairs  glued  in  by  hand. 
It  need  hardly  be  added  glue  is  not  durable,  though  it  can  be  cheaply 
repaired. 

"Iceland  fox"  is  nothing  but  Chinese  sheep  or  goat,  combed, 
electrified  and  bleached.  It  is  warm  but  sheds  and  dulls.  Also 
it  is  very  cheap. 

Muskrat  is  the  most  durable  imitation  fur.  The  thing  to  look 
out  for  is  the  crocking  or  cracking  of  the  dye,  "the  stay"  of  the  pelt. 
The  reason  so  many  muskrat  linings  pull  to  pieces  is  the  pelt  has 
been  thinned  too  closely,  or  cured  too  harshly.     It  cracks. 

Ermine  used  to  be  a  rare  high-priced,  almost  priceless  fur; 
for  with  the  black  spots  over  it,  it  was  the  miniver  of  royalty; 
but  for  some  years,  ermine  has  gone  out  of  style.  It  is  a  very  warm 
fur  for  children  or  for  evening  wraps ;  but  it  is  easily  soiled ;  and 
should  never  be  bought  on  the  same  price  basis  as  chinchilla,  mole, 
squirrel,  mink,  sable  or  marten.  Neither  the  pelt  nor  the  fur  are 
worth  it.  When  you  pay  such  prices,  you  are  paying  for  a  whim, 
and  not  for  real  values.  And  ermine  is  not  becoming  to  all  skins. 
Look  at  it  on  a  saffron  face. 

When  buying  kolinsky,  look  out  for  seam  rips  from  dye. 

When  wolf  is  sold  as  fox,  the  coarse  back  has  been  cut  out.  Feel 
for  the  outline  of  the  fox  shape  and  size. 

Lynx  is  a  soft,  delicate,  fluffy  fur ;  but  no  fluffy  fur  will  stand 
hard  usage  and  not  lose  its  fluff. 

When  buying  mink,  be  sure  not  only  that  it  is  mink,  but  that 
it  has  been  trapped  in  season,  in  December  and  January,  when  the 
fur  has  a  lustre.  Otherwise,  your  mink  may  have  to  be  dyed  to 
match  stripes  and  that  will  weaken  the  skin  below. 


38  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

Of  skunk,  there  are  two  kinds  in  the  fur  world  —  the  black  with 
his  tail  in  the  air,  his  poor  relative  the  Uttle  civet  striped  skunk. 
The  former  has  the  tougher  skin  and  the  deeper  fur.  The  latter 
should  never  be  a  high-priced  skin. 

The  best  beaver  is  golden  brown  with  the  lustre  of  the  sun. 
Other  beaver  may  have  been  trapped  out  of  season,  unprime  furs 
always  shed  hairs  and  wear  into  thin  spots. 

"Coon"  skin  is  tough  and  most  durable,  defying  sun  or  rain; 
but  to  be  beautiful  the  stripes  must  match  perfectly  and  be  dark. 
Beware  of  dyed  stripes. 

The  best  dog  skin  comes  from  China  and  Russia  and  is  very 
durable. 

Coney  is  nothing  but  rabbit.  You  usually  get  it  as  near  seal, 
or  French  seal.  It  lacks  the  lustre  —  also  the  gold  brown  of  Hud- 
son seal,  which  Is  muskrat. 

Twenty  years  ago,  American  trade  absorbed  only  ioo,CXX3 
muskrats  a  year.  To-day  it  absorbs  4,000,000  to  7,000,000.  The 
best  skins  go  into  Hudson  seals.  Others  go  to  imitate  kolinsky 
as  linings.  The  waste  of  muskrat  goes  into  felt  and  hats.  The 
muskrat  pelt  is  square.  The  kolinsky  is  oblong.  Feel  the  shape 
of  the  pelt  sewed  in  your  coat.  Muskrat  is  very  durable.  It  is 
nearly  always  a  good  buy  if  you  know  you  are  buying  muskrat  and 
not  kolinsky.     Its  price  has  gone  up  from  12  cents  to  ^  5  in  ten  years. 

The  best  furs  come  from  the  coldest  climate,  from  fresh  water  in 
preference  to  salt,  and  from  shaded  woods  in  preference  to  open 
plains.  Choose  accordingly ;  remembering  there  are  no  opossums, 
chinchillas,  nutrias  in  a  cold  climate,  and  no  beavers  worth  taking 
from  a  warm  climate.  There  are  no  tigers  from  the  far  North ; 
but  the  best  tigers  come  from  the  shaded  jungle. 

As  a  rule,  dehalred  furs  do  not  need  chemicals  and  therefore  are 
more  durable.     This  applies  to  beavers,  nutrias,  otters. 

When  beaver  and  otter  have  been  slightly  silvered,  they  are  more 
beautiful  than  golden  brown ;  but  the  silvering  has  been  done  by 
chemicals  and  may  weather  in  a  way  the  natural  fur  will  not.     The 


WHAT  WOMEN  FUR  BUYERS  SHOULD  KNOW  39 

chemicals  may  also  eat  down  to  the  skin  and  in  course  of  ten  years, 
weaken  it.  The  most  beautiful  collection  of  otter  I  have  ever  seen 
came  from  an  assorted  lot  of  Labrador  and  Kamchatka  skins.  Ex- 
cept for  their  size,  at  a  glance  and  at  a  distance  they  might  be  mis- 
taken for  dark  marten  lacking  the  stripe;  but  they  had  been  sil- 
vered by  chemicals  and  I  did  not  order  a  coat  made  from  them,  which 
would  have  cost  me  almost  as  much  as  mink  or  marten,  because  I 
know  a  coat  costing  so  much  should  last  a  lifetime ;  and  in  a  few 
years,  silvered  otter  would  not  look  as  well  as  the  lustrous  gold  brown, 
which  retains  its  complexion  for  twenty  years  unimpaired  if  you 
don't  expose  it  to  heat. 

Vegetable  dyes  do  not  injure  a  skin  as  much  as  chemical  dyes. 
Therefore  a  skin  well  cured  by  Indians  will  last  the  longest. 

While  wolf  is  counterfeited  for  fox,  it  is  a  tougher  skin  than  fox 
and  worth  the  value  of  a  fox  if  bought  at  the  price  of  red  fox,  or  cross 
fox.     Wolf  is  never  the  value  of  silver  or  black  fox. 

Smell  Russian  sable  if  you  want  to  know  if  some  stripes  have 
been  hand  dyed  by  a  feather.  A  process  of  smoke  fumes  is  some- 
times used  to  give  the  vapory  gleam  to  the  fur.  It  does  not  injure 
the  pelt  but  leaves  a  slight  odor  of  fumes. 

The  fisher  can  never  be  faked.  He  is  large  and  he  is  a  one  piece 
fur ;   and  his  bushy  tail  is  the  stamp  of  his  aristocracy  among  furs. 

Having  bought  your  rare  furs,  the  question  is  how  to  keep  them. 
Expensive  furs  should  be  examined  by  a  reliable  furrier  every  year 
or  two  for  signs  of  deterioration,  the  same  as  your  teeth  or  jewels. 
The  scuff  in  fox  next  to  the  wearer's  neck  should  be  repaired  every 
year.  Otherwise,  it  gives  a  shabby  appearance  to  what  is  just  as 
good  as  new.  This  particularly  applies  to  cross  fox,  which  comes 
next  to  silver  fox  in  value.  Furs  like  nutria  and  beaver,  which  mat, 
can  be  kept  as  lustrous  as  new  if  you  avoid  exposure  to  damp  weather 
and  have  them  whipped  and  combed  and  sawdust  cleaned  at  inter- 
vals as  you  would  have  a  fine  evening  gown  especially  freshened  up. 
Seals  real  and  imitation  and  all  lambs  should  be  watched  for  the 
acid  eating  down  to  the  skin,  which  can  be  reenforced  by  a  false  skin 


40  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

to  prevent  rips  and  tears.  The  deep  fluffy,  costly  furs  like  sable  and 
marten  and  mink  must  be  kept  absolutely  moth  proof  in  cedar 
chest,  or  rolled  in  tar  paper  with  moth  balls,  or  best  of  all,  stored 
insured  in  cold  storage  rooms,  where  the  temperature  will  prevent 
the  deposit  or  breeding  of  moths'  eggs. 

If  such  care  is  taken  of  furs  by  the  fur  wearer,  there  will  be  no 
quarrel  between  the  fur  buyer  and  the  lover  of  wild  life;  for  furs 
so  kept  will  soon  bring  each  fur  to  its  point  of  "saturation"  so  that 
for  a  season  the  muskrat  will  not  call  for  it  and  the  fur  animals  will 
replenish  themselves.  Also  high-priced  furs  bought  with  the  dis- 
crimination of  a  connoisseur  in  jewels  or  pictures  will  forever  rule 
off  the  market  furs  taken  when  they  are  not  prime ;  for  furs  taken 
when  they  are  not  prime  shed  hairs  and  rip  when  fleshed  and  have 
to  be  chemically  treated  before  they  can  be  marketed.  In  all  the 
States  of  the  Union  and  in  all  the  Provinces  of  Canada  to-day 
furs  taken  when  not  prime  are  confiscated  and  the  trappers  heavily 
fined.  Good  hunters  spare  the  mothers  and  take  only  the  ravenous 
young  males,  whose  cruel  depredations  among  themselves  perpetrate 
more  deaths  than  man  has  ever  invented.  You  have  to  know  only 
the  habits  of  the  wolf  with  its  mate,  or  the  wolverine,  or  the  mink, 
or  the  ermine,  or  the  Alaska  seal,  when  the  young  males  fight  for 
their  mates  and  destroy  the  pups  —  to  realize  that  fur  trading  pur- 
sued scientifically  as  the  big  companies  pursue  it  purely  to  conserve 
their  own  resources  —  is  infinitely  more  merciful  than  nature's 
law  of  claw  and  tooth  red  in  blood. 

The  guilty  rascal  in  the  fur  trade  is  the  irresponsible  gambler, 
who  has  been  playing  Nevada  gold  or  Texas  oil,  and  seeing  the  ad- 
vance in  the  price  of  furs  rushes  into  the  fur  game  offering  such  prices 
that  irresponsible  hunters  go  out  to  kill  to  the  point  of  extermination. 
These  gentry  ignorant  of  game  life  kill  prime  and  unprime,  young 
and  old,  male  and  female ;  but  when  the  unprime  comes  to  market, 
if  the  skins  are  rejected  by  buyers,  who  purchase  with  the  care  that 
they  would  an  art  object  or  a  jewel,  "these  gentry"  are  stung,  and 
poachers,  who  are  gamblers,  are  driven  out  of  the  fur  trade. 


WHAT  WOMEN  FUR  BUYERS  SHOULD  KNOW    41 

That  is  exactly  what  has  happened  in  the  sales  of  1920.  Good 
furs  never  sold  so  high.  Poor  furs  never  sold  so  low;  and  many  a 
foolish  buyer  had  to  buy  in  his  own  poor  offerings.  Such  traders 
are  out  of  the  game.  The  banks  will  extend  them  no  more  credit ; 
and  every  woman,  who  loves  furs  and  wild  life,  has  the  remedy  in 
her  own  hands.  Let  her  buy  her  furs  with  the  fine  taste  and  care 
she  would  buy  a  diamond  necklace,  or  an  oil  painting.  A  woman 
is  known  not  by  the  jewels  she  wears  but  by  the  hands  inside  the 
jewels.  So  she  is  stamped  by  her  furs.  Not  by  the  cost  but  by 
their  suitability ;  and  a  woman,  who  wears  $30,000  worth  of  pelts 
on  her  carcass,  proclaims  herself  as  great  a  game  hog  as  the  drunken 
sot  who  goes  out  and  slays  a  mother  fox  with  her  unborn  young. 

A  friend  of  mine  went  into  one  of  the  most  exclusive  shops  of 
New  York  not  long  ago.  She  was  shown  two  fur  coats ;  one  for 
$3000,  another  for  over  $30,000.  The  first  was  for  one  of  the  great- 
est women  philanthropists  in  America,  who  was  buying  it  for  life- 
long wear  as  she  would  buy  a  summer  camp.  The  other  was  for  a 
newspaper  head  liner,  who  had  come  up  from  the  gutter  via  the  dance 
hall  and  forgotten  the  marriage  ceremony  in  her  climb.  In  each 
case,  the  furs  proclaimed  the  woman. 


CHAPTER  IV 
FALSE  FURS  AND  FAKE  TRADE  NAMES 

It  is  a  mistake  to  regard  misleading  trade  names  as  a  proof  of 
the  perverse  dishonesty  of  the  furrier.  With  the  coming  of  the  great 
fur  markets  to  the  United  States  and  Canada  has  also  come  a  con- 
certed movement  to  eliminate  misleading  trade  names  and  to  grade 
furs  to  such  fixed  standards  that  any  buyer  who  takes  the  trouble 
can  know  exactly  what  value  he  is  getting  for  his  money. 

The  misleading  trade  names  arose  in  the  first  place  from  the  ig- 
norance of  the  small  furrier  and  of  the  retail  merchant  of  the  real 
character  of  his  own  wares.  Two  examples  have  been  given  of 
this  —  the  fur  dresser,  who  on  a  bet  failed  to  distinguish  Alaska  seal 
from  Hudson  seal,  which  is  muskrat;  and  the  Northern  trader, 
who  failed  to  tell  a  first  class  Belgian  tom  cat  from  fisher.  If  experts 
failed  to  distinguish  true  from  false,  how  could  the  small  retailer  be 
expected  to  know  f  Especially,  how  could  a  salesman,  who  had 
never  seen  a  wild  fur-bearing  animal  in  his  life,  be  expected  to  know  '? 
And  with  a  buyer,  who  did  not  know  goat  from  wolf,  and  a  seller, 
who  got  a  premium  for  pushing  up  his  total  of  sales  each  day,  false 
furs  and  fake  trade  names  got  their  strangle-hold  on  the  market. 

The  second  cause  of  misleading  trade  names  was  directly  the 
fault  of  the  public.  There  was  a  day  —  we  all  remember  it  —  when 
coon  skin  was  the  official  badge  of  "the  cabby,"  or  the  Hveried 
winter  coachman.  These  were  cheap,  ragged-looking  "coon,"  re- 
taihng  at  $25  to  ^45  a  coat,  cap  and  gauntlets  to  match ;  but  that 
quality  of  coon  destroyed  the  value  of  good  coon  on  the  market. 
What  matter  if  a  coachman's  coon  were  an  unprime,  faded,  dirty  yel- 
low striped  fur,  and  good  prime  coon  were  a  fur  glossy  and  silky  as 

42 


FALSE  FURS  AND   FAKE  TRADE  NAMES      43 

silver  fox  and  beautifully  striped  with  black  and  brown  as  the  backbone 
mark  of  some  silver  fox,  or  the  natural  stripes  of  marten.  The 
public  did  not  look  twice  and  would  not  have  coon  under  its  true 
name;  so  coon  came  on  the  market  as  a  seller  as  "Alaska  bear" 
and  "silver  bear"  —  and  sold  at  three  times  the  price  to  buyers, 
who  were  greedy  for  its  beauty. 

Then  there  was  the  time  immemorial  prejudice  against  skunk. 
There  was  also  the  fact  that  up  to  very  recent  years,  skunk  was  not 
completely  deodorized.  Get  caught  in  a  rain  and  then  come  into 
a  hot  atmosphere  like  a  crowded  church,  and  the  odor  of  a  skunk 
with  his  flag  up  filled  the  air.  Skunk  as  skunk  simply  wouldn't 
sell;  so  skunk  became  "Alaska  sable,"  or  "black  sable"  —  though 
"a  rose  by  any  other  name  smells  as  sweet"  —  and  the  salesman  could 
conscientiously  assure  you  it  would  wear  better  than  Russian  sable 
and  had  a  stronger,  tougher  pelt  as  well  as  deeper  pelage.  It  was 
no  time  till  under  the  new  name,  good  skunk  was  selling  high  as 
indifferent  sable. 

Then  it  is  only  within  the  last  few  years  that  the  perfecting  of  the 
dyeing  of  muskrat  has  produced  an  effect  as  beautiful  as  Alaska  seal 
and  much  more  durable.  The  most  of  people  remember  muskrat 
as  "rat"  with  a  long  stringy  tail  and  fur  that  dulled  and  faded  and 
shed  hairs  as  it  grew  older.  That  muskrat  plucked  or  evened  of  its 
long  over-hairs  would  neither  shed,  nor  fade  —  the  public  did  not 
know.  Rat  was  rat  worth  about  lO)!^  a  skin  ;  and  the  public  would 
not  pay  ^200  and  $300  for  a  first  class  coat  called  "  rat,"  where  they 
would  pay  ^300  to  $400  for  a  coat  called  "Hudson  seal." 

Then,  do  you  think  any  ambitious  girl  was  going  to  pay  $20  to 
$35  for  a  neck  piece  called  "torn  cat"  .?  Not  she  !  Tom  cat  to  her 
was  worth  about  the  ^o^  she  would  pay  some  villager  to  shoot  an 
obnoxious  bird  killer ;  but  "genet"  —  that  was  different.  It  might 
be  some  kind  of  sable,  or  strange  beast  a  relative  of  the  sable.  Any- 
way, other  people  didn't  know  what  "genet"  was  ;  so  she  paid  $20 
to  ^35  for  it. 

As  for  ermine,  with  black  dots  all  over  it,  it  was  the  miniver  in 


44  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

which  royalty  was  crowned.  It  was  also  a  favorite  evening  opera 
cloak  for  the  wealthy,  or  neck  piece  for  light  summer  wear  and  even- 
ing dress ;  so  why  inquire  too  closely  whether  ermine  were  rabbit 
or  cat  with  black  dots  stuck  on  ?  The  badge  of  true  ermine  was  the 
sulphur  shade,  not  the  black  tail  tip ;  but  that  could  be  fixed  up 
with  a  paint  brush  ;  so  why  inquire  too  closely  when  the  values  were 
so  fabulously  different,  that  only  the  rich  could  afford  one  skin, 
and  only  the  poor  the  other  ? 

Everybody  couldn't  afford  silver  fox,  but  everybody  could  af- 
ford "Baltic  fox,"  which  was  rabbit  and  was  just  as  warm. 

Don't  curse  high  heaven  for  the  innate  dishonesty  of  mankind  ! 
Rabbit  are  so  prolific  they  are  a  pest.  They  can  never  be  depleted 
used  as  fur ;  and  every  rabbit  pelt  so  used  saves  the  use  of  some 
rarer  skin. 

Americans  have  been  trapping  skunk  now  for  over  300  years,  and 
from  odors  that  greet  motors  flying  over  country  roads,  the  skunk 
is  still  with  us  going  strong.  He  is,  indeed,  about  the  only  kind  of 
road  arrester,  who  can  punish  a  speed  devil  adequately ;  so  don't 
judge  the  little  skunk  sporting  the  cognomen  of  an  aristocratic 
relative  as  "black  marten."  Just  remember  there  is  no  such  thing 
as  "  black  marten,"  any  more  than  there  is  such  a  fur  as  "black  sable." 
Sables  and  martens  alike  have  a  ground  pelage  of  exceedingly  dark 
browns  and  golds.     The  skunk's  pelage  is  black. 

There  was  a  day  when  you  could  buy  the  best  Northern  mink  — 
deep  over-hair,  fine  golden  brown  under-hair  —  at  90^  each  round 
Banff,  Canada,  when  the  Stoney  Indians  brought  their  hunt  from 
Kootenay.  The  same  skins  to-day  sell  high  as  $19  to  $30;  and 
the  muskrat,  which  is  tougher,  better-wearing  pelt,  can  be  bought 
from  $4.  to  $5 ;  so  why  grudge  the  little  muskrat  dyed  to  imitate 
mink  ^  No  grudge  at  all,  except  that  a  false  name  is  a  cheat  and 
ultimately  reacts  to  hurt  the  value  of  the  true  fur.  The  muskrat 
is  square  in  shape.  The  mink  is  long  and  snaky  in  shape ;  and  their 
shapes  are  really  very  good  indexes  to  their  characters ;  so  better 
give  each  its  true  name  and  character. 


FALSE   FURS  AND   FAKE  TRADE  NAMES      45 

Fifteen  years  ago,  beaver  was  very  scarce  and  very  high-priced 
because  a  closed  season  was  on  in  beaver  for  many  Canadian  prov- 
inces. To-day  beaver  is  not  so  scarce,  nor  comparatively  so  high  in 
price.  But  when  beaver  was  scarce,  nutria  from  South  America 
was  not ;  and  good  nutria  was  often  faked  in  fur  trimmings  for  bea- 
ver. It  could  not  be  faked  in  a  coat.  The  difference  in  the  fur  is 
too  great ;  but  it  could  be  faked  for  hat  trimmings,  neck  and  sleeve 
pieces  and  edgings  for  velvet  gowns.  In  coats,  the  difference  is 
easily  told. '  Beaver  is  gold  brown,  or  gray  brown  with  a  silvery 
cast.  Nutria  is  sepia  color.  Beaver  is  a  large  animal.  Nutria 
is  small  as  a  muskrat.  Beaver  is  a  deep  thick  fur.  Nutria  is  a 
thick  fur,  but  not  deep.  Just  now  the  faking  of  beaver  by  nutria 
is  not  in  vogue ;  for  nutria  is  growing  scarce  and  beaver  more  plen- 
tiful. 

Many  people  will  not  wear  dog  fur,  who  have  no  objection  to  wolf, 
though  the  dog  and  the  wolf  are  brothers ;  so  black  dog  is  sold  for 
wolf.  I  can  tell  the  difference  myself,  though  it  would  be  very  hard 
for  me  to  tell  others  how  to  tell  the  difference.  The  nearest  parallel 
I  can  give  it  —  if  you  neglect  a  dog  and  allow  him  to  run  wild  in 
cold  weather,  keeping  him  out  day  and  night,  his  fur  will  lose  its 
sleekness  and  take  on  a  coarseness  and  thickness.  It  will  be  less 
even.  The  over-hairs  will  be  long  and  irregular  and  deep.  The 
pelt  will  not  be  tight.  But  for  trade  purposes,  the  trouble  is  a 
cutting  machine  used  as  an  evener  and  a  paint  brush  to  give  lustre 
in  the  dyes  can  render  these  skins  almost  a  counterfeit  of  each  other — 
almost  but  not  quite  —  the  wolf  will  still  be  deeper,  fluffier,  the 
dog  tighter  like  a  lamb  skin  pelt ;  but  why  not  sell  them  under  their 
true  names  f 

The  distinction  between  dyed  opossum  and  dyed  skunk  hardly 
needs  to  be  given.  Opossum  has  a  kink  to  it  and  is  a  soft  fur. 
Skunk  has  hairs  straight  as  a  line  in  Euclid  and  is  a  harsh,  thick, 
deep  fur. 

Only  the  back  of  the  lynx  is  used  for  high-priced  trade  purposes. 
The  fur  is  so  soft  that  the  sides  and  belly  rub.     They  are  cut  and 


46  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

used  for  linings,  edgings,  trimmings,  fellings.  I  confess  I  can  see 
no  reason  for  even  trying  to  fake  lynx.  It  is  an  expensive  and  a 
beautiful  fur,  but  a  very  fragile  fur.  Still  when  you  see  lynx  ad- 
vertised cheap  under  any  qualifying  name,  except  pure  lynx,  such 
as  "Baltic  lynx"  or  "Asiatic  lynx,"  etc.,  lookout.  You  are  buy- 
ing rabbit. 

Wolf  for  fox  is  a  better  wearing  fur ;  but  why  lie  about  it  ? 

Why  not  each  to  its  true  name  f 

A  good  kolinsky  is  really  a  relative  of  the  sable ;  but  because 
kolinsky  is  naturally  orange,  it  must  be  dyed,  and  being  dyed  can 
never  be  durable  as  an  undyed  fur,  therefore  it  should  never  be  sold 
at  even  an  approach  to  sable  prices.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  it  is  never 
sold  at  an  approach  to  sable  prices.  Then  why  call  it  "a  Japanese 
sable"  ?  Kolinsky  price  is  not  helped  and  sable  price  is  slightly 
adulterated. 

There  is  a  point  about  mole.  It  Is  subject  to  tiny  bald  spots. 
These  are  not  signs  of  a  bad  skin,  any  more  than  pores  in  a  piece 
of  good  cloisonne,  or  crackles  in  Satsuma  china.  Small  bald 
spots  are  as  common  to  the  mole's  skin  as  warts  to  the  human  skin. 
Too  many  deteriorate  the  value  but  do  not  affect  the  durability  of 
the  skin. 

Hudson  seal  —  muskrat  —  and  Alaska  seal,  both  being  dyed, 
how  tell  them  apart  ?  Muskrat  is  small  in  size  —  seal  is  large. 
That  is  the  only  difference  I  can  give,  as  dyeing  and  dressing  have 
perfected  both  pelts. 

A  great  many  people  would  scorn  to  wear  a  sheep  skin,  but 
they  will  eagerly  wear  an  "  Iceland  fox,"  which  is  nothing  more  or 
less  than  a  Chinese  sheep  skin  combed,  electrified  and  bleached, 
with  this  difference  —  the  sheep  hide  is  tougher  than  the  fox  hide, 
but  the  sheep  hairs  will  in  a  few  seasons  shed.  I  can  see  for  the  life 
of  me  no  evil  in  this  fur  faked  as  white  fox  for  use  by  children. 
A  child  will  not  take  care  of  furs.  "The  Iceland  fox"  Is  cheap  and 
warm  and  very  beautiful  round  a  little  child  face.  China  sends  out 
ten  million  such  sheep  and  goat  skins  a  year. 


FALSE   FURS  AND   FAKE  TRADE  NAMES      47 

"Pointed  fox,"  the  fake  for  "silver  fox,"  is  a  very  expensive  fur 
and  almost  as  good  as  its  prototype;  but  the  white  hairs  are  the 
badger  put  on  by  hand ;  and  when  the  badger  hairs  begin  to  come 
out  and  the  silver  fox  to  show  wear,  the  buyer  is  apt  to  blame  silver 
fox  and  to  hunt  the  market  for  true  silver  fox ;  so  here,  true  names 
should  be  enforced. 

Coney  is  rabbit.  Near  seal  is  rabbit.  Electric  seal  is  rabbit; 
and  no  rabbit  will  ever  wear  like  seal ;  and  the  sooner  this  name  is 
given  its  honest  brand  the  better.  In  a  few  years,  when  Alaska 
seal  have  multiplied  to  the  point  of  being  within  reach  of  buyers  of 
moderate  means,  the  real  Alaska  seal  will  be  on  the  market  again  in 
volume;  and  to  have  half  a  dozen  varieties  of  seal  on  the  market 
will  only  hurt  the  true  seal. 

Chinchilla  has  become  so  scarce  a  fur  that  the  most  of  South 
American  countries  from  which  it  comes  have  put  on  a  closed  season 
for  several  years ;  so  look  out  for  a  chinchilla  on  the  market  to-day 
being  nothing  more  or  less  than  a  faked  rabbit,  which  is  a  very  mean 
fake,  indeed,  for  it  will  both  shed  and  wear. 

Two  or  three  absolute  cheats  for  which  there  is  no  excuse  what- 
ever and  should  be  subject  to  arrest  for  misrepresentation  are : 

(i)  Coon  plucked,  dyed  and  sold  for  beaver,  which  is  preemi- 
nently the  undyed  and  undyeable  fur. 

(2)  Marmot,  or  mountain  ground  squirrel,  which  has  a  tough 
hide  but  a  fur  that  always  sheds,  dyed  in  stripes  for  mink. 

(3)  Muskrat  dyed  in  stripes  for  mink. 

As  long  as  the  world  markets  for  furs  were  in  London,  Germany 
and  Russia,  the  responsibility  rested  squarely  on  the  dyers  and 
dressers  in  those  centres ;  but  now  that  the  world  market  for  furs 
has  come  to  three  centres  in  America  —  centres  especially  for  Ameri- 
can and  Canadian  furs  —  honest  names  over  honest  goods  and  a 
trade  standardized  fine  as  wheat  or  cotton  must  be  the  rule. 

And  this  is  the  universal  desire  of  the  trade,  from  the  great 
auction  corporations  like  Funstons  of  St.  Louis  to  the  great  traders 
like  the  Hudson's  Bay  or  Revillon  Freres,  and  the  great  dyers  like 


48  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

Chappal,  and  such  retailers  as  those  on  Fifth  Avenue,  New  York, 
whose  names  are  a  household  word  synonymous  with  honor. 

Back  as  early  as  1887,  the  London  Chamber  of  Commerce 
gave  notice  that  misnaming  furs  would  be  liable  to  prosecution.  The 
names  ruled  as  non-permissible  were : 

Muskrat  or  musquash,  pulled  and  dyed Seal 

Nutria,  pulled  and  dyed Seal 

Nutria,  pulled  and  natural Beaver 

Rabbit,  sheared  and  dyed Seal 

Otter,  pulled  and  dyed Seal 

Marmot,  dyed Mink  or  sable 

Fitch,  dyed Sable 

Rabbit,  dyed Sable  or  French  sable 

Hare,  dyed Sable,  fox  or  lynx 

Muskrat,  dyed Mink  or  sable 

Wallaby,  dyed Skunk 

White  rabbit Ermine 

White  rabbit,  dyed Chinchilla 

White  hare,  dyed  or  natural Fox,  foxaline 

Goat,  dyed Bear  or  leopard 

The  Canadian  Conservation  Report  recommends  that  the 
following  names  be  abolished  : 

Variety  Sold  as 

American Real  Russian  sable 

Fitch,  dyed Sable 

Goat,  dyed Bear 

Hare,  dyed Sable  or  fox 

Kid Lamb  or  broadtail 

Marmot,  dyed Mink,  sable  or  skunk 

Mink,  dyed Sable 

Musquash  (muskrat),  dyed    .     .     .     .     .  Mink  or  sable 

Musquash,  pulled  and  dyed Seal,  electric  seal.  Red  River  seal  or 

Hudson  Bay  seal 

Nutria,  pulled  and  dyed Seal,  electric  seal.  Red   River  seal  or 

Hudson  Bay  seal 

Nutria,  pulled,  natural Beaver  and  otter 

Opossum,  sheared  and  dyed Beaver 

Otter,  pulled  and  dyed Seal 


Dyed  Red  Fox  Showing  Method  of  Gluing  in  the  Badger  Hairs. 


FALSE  FURS  AND  FAKE  TRADE  NAMES      49 

Rabbit,  dyed Sable  or  French  sable 

Rabbit,  sheared  and  dyed Seal,    electric   seal,    Red    River   seal, 

Hudson  Bay  seal,  and  seal  musquash 

Rabbit,  white Ermine 

Rabbit,  white,  dyed Chinchilla 

Wallaby,  dyed Skunk 

White  hare Fox  and  other  similar  names 

Dyed  furs  of  all  kinds Natural 

White  hairs  inserted  in  foxes  and  sables  .  Real  or  natural  furs 

The  London  Chamber  of  Commerce  recommends  the  following 
names : 

Name  of  Fur  Permissible  Description 

American  sable Canadian  sable  or  real  sable 

Fitch,  dyed Sable  fitch 

Goat,  dyed      * Bear  goat 

Hare,  dyed Sable  hare  or  fox  hare 

Kids Karakul  kids 

Marmot,  dyed Sable  marmot  or  skunk   marmot  or 

mink  marmot 

Mink,  dyed Sable  mink 

Musquash  muskrat,  pulled  and  dyed   .     .  Seal  musquash 

Nutria,  pulled  and  dyed Seal  nutria 

Nutria,  pulled,  natural Beaver  nutria  or  otter  nutria 

Opossum,  sheared  and  dyed Beaver  opossum 

Otter,  pulled  and  dyed Seal  otter 

Rabbit,  dyed Sable  coney 

White  hair  inserted  in  fox  or  sable  .     .     .  Painted  fox  or  sable 

Rabbit,  sheared  and  dyed Seal  coney  or  musquash  coney 

Rabbit,  white Mock  ermine 

Rabbit,  white,  dyed Chinchilla  coney 

Wallaby,  sheared  and  dyed Skunk  wallaby 

White  hare       Imitation  fox  or  mock  fox 

The  trend  of  the  American  trade  to-day  is  to  abolish  all  false 
names  and  give  each  fur  its  true  name ;  and  as  far  as  the  fur  auction 
and  the  best  retailers  are  concerned,  this  is  the  rule  in  Canada  and 
the  United  States. 


CHAPTER  V 

FUR  FARMING  TO  SUPPLY  THE  WORLD  DEMAND  FOR 
FURS  — SILVER  FOX 

Fur  farming  is  the  most  hopeful  and  fascinating  phase  of  the 
fur  trade  to-day. 

You  can  call  it  by  any  name  you  like;  but  when  human  care 
of  a  fur-bearing  species  supplies  the  world  with  over  three  million 
lamb  skin  coats  a  year,  transforms  a  whole  province  like  Prince 
Edward  Island  into  a  silver  fox  farm,  increases  the  number  of  buffalo 
in  one  park  from  a  few  hundred  to  5000  in  ten  years,  changes  the 
skunk  into  a  domestic  pet  though  it  can  change  neither  the  odor  nor 
the  stripes,  brings  back  the  number  of  beaver  from  a  rarity  to  almost 
a  pest,  and  restores  the  depleted  Alaska  Seal  Islands  to  the  yearly 
production  of  100,000  pelts  a  season,  equal  to  the  best  days  of  the  seal 
fisheries  —  fur  farming  has  come  to  stay.  It  has  also  become  a 
mighty  important  factor  in  the  fur  trade. 

Ten  years  ago,  the  greatest  authorities  on  the  fur  trade  were 
saying  fur  farming  couldn't  be  done.  To-day,  they  are  asking  — 
will  it  be  overdone  like  the  tulip  craze  of  Europe  ?  If  a  whole 
province  goes  into  silver  fox  farming,  won't  it  be  overdone  so  that 
prices  will  slump  and  the  farms  lose  profit  and  so  be  forced  out  of 
business  ?  If  ten  years'  government  care  of  Alaska  seals  has 
increased  the  fur  output  of  the  rookeries  from  a  few  thousands  to 
a  hundred  thousand  —  which  is  the  expectation  by  1922  —  won't 
seals  become  as  common  as  muskrats  ^  To  which  the  most  ob- 
vious answer  is,  if  furs  as  beautiful  as  silver  fox  and  Alaska  seal 

so 


FUR  FARMING  TO  SUPPLY  WORLD  DEMAND     51 

become  as  common  as  muskrat,  there  is  no  woman  buyer  who  will 
object. 

Lessen  the  price  of  the  silver  fox  and  Alaska  seal,  and  you  will 
multiply  buyers  a  thousandfold. 

However  cruel  trapping  may  seem  to  the  tender-hearted  city 
dweller,  who  knows  wild  life  only  from  books  and  not  from  direct 
contact,  trapping  is  kindness  itself  compared  to  the  sufferings  and 
deaths  of  fur  animals  in  wild  life.  There  is,  indeed,  hardly  such  a 
thing  as  a  natural  death  in  wild  life.  Mothers  and  unborn  young, 
weaklings  and  old  —  alike  fall  victims  to  the  ravening  tooth  and 
claw  of  wild  life ;  and  hunger  is  the  periodic  urge  and  starvation 
a  recurrent  scourge.  All  these  sufferings  are  eliminated  from  the 
lives  of  the  fur-bearing  tribes  by  fur  farming.  It  is  well  known  that 
in  seasons  when  berries  and  haws  are  plentiful,  the  marten  and  bear 
become  fat  and  sleek,  and  when  cold  weather  comes,  their  fur 
takes  on  a  sheen  seen  only  on  animals  in  perfect  flesh.  Likewise 
of  the  fox.  An  exclusive  flesh  diet  causes  intestinal  troubles  that 
fever  and  dull  the  fur.  Mix  the  flesh  diet  with  eggs  and  meal  and 
grapes  and  wild  berries,  and  the  fox  is  in  perfect  health.  Scientific 
feeding  and  food  in  abundance  are  possible  on  the  fur  farm  in  a  way 
never  known  to  wild  life ;  and  the  entire  tendency  is  to  a  quick, 
painless  death  because  any  other  kind  of  death  may  injure  the 
fur.  To  those  kindly  souls,  who  object  to  death  in  any  form  coming 
to  wild  life,  it  ought  not  to  be  necessary  to  say  that  death  ultimately 
is  inevitable  to  every  animal;  and  if  nature  did  not  eradicate  the 
superfluous  male  by  hunger  and  scourge  and  fight,  it  would  be 
almost  an  impossibility  for  the  young  of  any  species  to  survive. 
It  is  this  drives  the  caribou  thousands  of  miles  to  lonely  water-girt 
rocks  to  bring  forth  their  young.  A  wolf  will  not  only  kill  his  mate, 
but  disembowel  her  and  eat  her  young.  A  mother  fox  alarmed  by 
danger  will  slay  and  eat  her  young.  Scientific  abundant  feeding 
to  improve  the  fur  and  quick  painless  death  not  to  fever  or  frighten 
the  animal,  become  necessary  features  of  fur  farming.  Weaklings 
are  eliminated.     The  comfort  of  the  fur-bearing  animal  is  studied 


52  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

and  practised ;  and  when  breeding  stock  are  valued  at  from  ^8oo 
a  pair  to  ^30,000,  it  is  a  pretty  safe  certainty,  the  progeny  on  a  fur 
farm  will  receive  tenderer  care  than  many  a  human  family. 

In  fact,  the  failures  of  the  first  two  or  three  attempts  at  fox 
farming  arose  from  sheer  neglect.  On  the  principle  that  man  must 
not  interfere  with  nature,  the  foxes  were  captured  and  turned  loose 
on  some  desert  island,  where  they  perished  from  starvation  or 
disease.  The  first  spectacular  successes  in  fur  farming  arose  from 
handling  the  fur  bearers  just  as  you  would  handle  priceless  thorough- 
bred cattle,  or  blue-ribbon-winning  race  horses  —  by  studying  their 
habits  and  needs,  and  stinting  them  nothing. 

While  there  are  at  time  of  writing  36  fox  farms  in  the  United 
States  and  29  fur-bearing  farms  of  other  kinds,  and  while  there  are 
in  Canada  at  least  1000  fur  farms  of  all  kinds  —  it  was  on  Prince 
Edward  Island  that  the  first  great  spectacular  success  of  fur  farming 
was  made.  One  fox  farm  had  failed  partly  on  Anticosti  and  another 
failed  altogether  off  Labrador,  chiefly  because  the  animals  had 
simply  been  caught  and  turned  loose.  Whereas  in  Prince  Edward 
Island,  fox  farming  followed  the  same  lines  you  would  follow  with 
cattle  or  sheep. 

Naturally,  it  pays  better  to  farm  a  fur  with  a  pelt  worth  from 
$500  to  $1000  rather  than  an  animal  with  a  pelt  worth  $20  to  $30; 
so  Prince  Edward  Island  was  lucky  in  getting  started  right. 

The  question  comes  up  —  Is  the  silver  fox  a  species,  or  a  freak  ? 
Is  he  the  result  of  being  caught  just  at  the  time  when  his  fur  is 
turning  from  summer  coat  to  winter  coat,  from  light  to  dark,  or 
at  the  age  when  youth  is  beginning  to  mingle  white  hairs  with 
black  ?  Or  is  he  some  mix-up  of  nature's  pigments,  which  we  don't 
understand  J 

Only  ten  years  ago,  I  propounded  that  question  to  one  of  the 
greatest  naturaHsts  of  Canada,  a  man  who  had  been  a  curator  of 
wild  life  for  twenty  years ;  and  he  did  not  know.  He  could  only 
give  an  opinion ;  and  he  gave  it  tentatively.  A  few  years  later  on 
a  long  canoe  trip  with  a  guide,  who  had  trapped  in  the  North  for 


FUR  FARMING  TO  SUPPLY  WORLD  DEMAND    53 

twenty  years,  I  asked  the  same  question;  and  he  didn't  know. 
He  could  only  give  an  opinion ;  and  he  gave  it  doubtfully.  Both 
men  gave  the  same  answer  in  one  respect.  You  found  silver  fox 
pups  in  the  litter  of  cross  fox  and  of  black  fox  and  sometimes,  but 
rarely,  In  the  litter  of  red  fox;  but  these  instances  didn't  tell  you 
whether  the  silver  fox  were  a  species,  or  a  freak,  till  you  could  defi- 
nitely estabUsh  the  parentage  of  both  the  vixen  and  the  jack,  back 
not  one  generation  but  two  or  three. 

All  these  disputes  have  been  cleared  up  by  fox  farming.  What- 
ever the  silver  fox  was  originally,  as  the  Lord  made  the  first  silver 
fox,  whether  a  variation,  or  a  freak,  or  a  species,  what  the  silver 
fox  can  be  made  we  now  know.  He  can  be  made  into  a  registered 
thoroughbred  of  his  own  kind  true  to  breeding  as  a  thoroughbred 
Holstein,  or  Ayrshire,  or  Guernsey,  with  only  such  occasional  freak 
throw-backs  to  ancestry  or  mixed  blood,  as  the  best  Holsteins 
will  sometimes  show,  when  ten  generations  of  blacks  and  whites 
will  surprise  themselves  by  bringing  forth  a  red  Holstein. 

Follow  the  monk,  Mendel's  laws  as  to  mating  sweet  peas,  mate 
pure  silver  fox  to  a  pure  silver  fox,  and  don't  vary  for  three  genera- 
tions —  above  all  don't  introduce  alien  blood,  whose  ancestry  you 
don't  know  —  and  true  as  the  clock  ticks  its  rounds,  from  silver  fox 
you  will  get  only  silver  foxes  after  the  third  generation.  The  first 
family  may  have  a  cross  fox.  The  second  family  may  have  a  throw 
back  to  a  cross  fox ;  but  if  you  mate  only  silver  to  silver,  silver  you 
will  get  after  the  third  generation ;  and  you  will  be  entitled  to 
register  your  third  generations  as  thoroughbreds  in  the  registration 
book  of  fox  farms. 

Registration  Book ! 

How  the  fur  hunters  of  ten  years  ago  would  have  scoffed  at  that ! 
But  a  lot  has  happened  in  the  fur  world  in  the  last  ten  years ;  and 
fox  farms  to-day  have  begun  registration  books  for  thoroughbreds. 
When  you  consider  that  fox  farming  had  been  condemned  as  a 
failure  in  the  '8o's,  and  re-condemned  and  double  damned  as  a 
failure  in  the  '90's  and  down  as  late  as  19 10,  there  is  really  no  limit 


54  THE  FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

how  far  fur  farming  may  go  in  the  fur  world.  It  is  to-day  growing 
so  fast,  that  though  I  have  the  latest  records  I  am  aware  this  record 
of  it  will  be  incomplete  before  a  year  has  passed. 

I  recall  the  day  when  Manitoba's  record  as  a  wheat  province 
touched  the  unhoped  aggregate  of  a  million  bushels.  The  Western 
provinces  are  to-day  shipping  300,000,000  bushels  of  wheat.  But 
yesterday,  the  American  trade  in  furs  fluctuated  from  $17,000,000 
to  $30,000,000.  In  the  years  of  the  War,  it  jumped  to  over  $100,- 
000,000;  and  when  fur  farming  has  increased  the  supply  of  rare 
pelts,  and  fur  dressing  has  done  for  other  furs  what  it  has  done 
transforming  muskrat  from  a  I2ff  pelt  to  a  $5  pelt,  I  look  to  see 
America's  trade  in  furs  jump  like  the  jump  in  Western  wheat  from 
$100,000  to  $300,000,000.  In  1908,  the  exports  of  furs  from  the 
United  States  were  worth  $7,712,890,  and  the  imports  were 
$15,918,149  —  $23,000,000  in  all.  To-day,  that  foreign  trade  in 
furs  exceeds  $100,000,000. 

The  first  successful  silver  fox  farm  In  Prince  Edward  Island  sold 
a  few  seasons  ago  for  $600,000.  The  neighboring  successful  fox 
ranch  sold  for  $250,000.  Thirty  young  foxes  of  first  grade  in  fur 
were  produced  from  one  pair  in  nine  years ;  and  the  pelts  of  this 
family  sold  at  an  average  of  $1500.  It  is  a  question  if  any  Hol- 
stein  beauties  ever  showed  as  spectacular  a  record.  On  80  ranches 
in  Prince  Edward  Island  at  the  present  time  are  200  silver  foxes 
and  3000  of  cross  and  silver  and  400  pure  cross.  Eighty-five  per 
cent  of  the  silver  foxes  coming  on  the  fur  market  to-day  come  from 
Prince  Edward  Island.  Prince  Edward  Island  prime  pelts  seldom 
bring  less  than  $500  and  one  brought  over  $2000.  In  191 3, 
$12,000,000  had  been  invested  in  silver  fox  farming  on  the  Island. 
To-day  the  total  is  close  to  $26,000,000.  Eight  hundred  dollars 
is  considered  cheap  for  a  pair  of  good  foxes  —  vixen  and  dog  —  and 
as  high  as  $35,000  has  been  paid  for  a  perfect  pair.  The  danger 
to-day  is  not  that  silver  fox  farming  will  not  succeed,  but  that  it 
will  succeed  so  well  that  it  will  attract  not  stock  breeders  but  stock 
jobbers  and  fly-by-night  speculators. 


FUR  FARMING  TO  SUPPLY  WORLD  DEMAND    55 

It  was  in  1898  that  Johann  Beetz,  a  Belgian,  brought  down  a 
pair  of  Alaska  silver  foxes  to  Piastre  Bale  on  the  north  shore  of 
the  Gulf  of  St.  Lawrence  and  established  them  In  pens  with  salmon, 
lobster  and  game  as  a  diet.  For  eighteen  years,  he  watched  his 
fur  family  till  they  graded  pure  dark  silver  thoroughbreds.  Dalton 
of  Prince  Edward  Island  had  begun  experimenting  with  red  foxes 
in  1887.  Oulton,  later  his  partner,  was  doing  the  same  with  foxes 
from  Anticosti  Island ;  but  because  the  Antlcosti  foxes  had  been 
allowed  to  run  wild,  they  did  not  prove  true  and  were  killed  off  the 
Prince  Edward  Island  ranch.  The  two  men  joined  Interests  in 
1896  and  constructed  quarter  acre  pens  within  an  outside  enclosure 
from  which  curious  sightseers  were  utterly  barred.  Beetz  had  begun 
by  mating  his  fox  to  several  lady  partners ;  but  Dalton  had  found 
that  the  fox  is  a  strictly  monogamous  gentleman  If  so  permitted ; 
and  that  led  to  pure  strains  of  blood  and  better  and  better  fur. 
It  was  In  1900  that  $1800  was  paid  for  a  silver  fox  skin  In  London ; 
and  the  two  fur  farmers  began  to  foresee  possibilities  that  would 
turn  a  fox  farm  Into  a  gold  mine.  Foxes  litter  5  to  9  puppies  a  year, 
and  begin  to  reproduce  themselves  the  second  year.  Could  but  a 
perfect  prolific  strain  of  silver  be  established,  nine  times  $1800 
would  be  a  fairly  valuable  family  from  little  fellows  whose  food  could 
be  kept  to  a  cost  of  ^50  a  year,  with  a  keeper  who  could  supervise 
a  dozen  families. 

A  neighbor  of  Dalton's  in  1898  had  been  able  to  buy  a  pair  of 
foxes  for  $340.  Ten  years  later,  as  good  a  pair  cost  all  the  way  from 
$3000  to  $35,000.  It  beat  the  land  boom  in  the  West,  or  the  oil 
craze  in  the  South ;  and  was  equally  chancy ;  for  ranchers  new 
to  the  game  lost  their  litters  of  priceless  beauties  from  not  having 
provided  nests  that  were  damp-proof.  Finally  by  placing  a  small 
barrel  in  a  large  barrel  and  packing  the  space  between  with  in- 
sulator cold-proof,  the  lady  fox  was  provided  with  a  proper  cradle 
for  her  young ;  and  each  year's  costly  experience  was  adding  to  the 
fur  rancher's  knowledge. 

Naturally,  while  fox  farming  was  still  experimental  with  critics 


56  THE  FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

and  know-it-alls  fervently  hoping  for  the  worst,  failures  and 
dearly  bought  knowledge  were  not  proclaimed  from  the  house- 
tops, nor  knowledge  given  out  free.  In  fact,  long  after  fur  farming 
had  become  an  assured  success,  the  first  ranches  were  still  keeping 
their  lips  sealed  and  shipping  furs  from  different  post  offices  and 
placing  returns  in  scattered  banks  in  order  to  keep  their  success  to 
themselves. 

The  early  failures  arose  from  : 

Mixing  alien  and  poor  blood  as  the  foxes  from  Anticosti. 

Permitting  the  captured  foxes  to  run  wild  and  giving  no  special 
care. 

Not  knowing  that  the  fox  is  a  one- wife  gentleman  and  life  partner. 

Not  using  woven  wire  as  an  enclosure. 

Not  cementing  the  woven  wire  deep  enough  to  prevent  burrow- 
ing. 

Not  providing  damp-proof  nests  for  the  litter. 

Not  mating  silver  to  silver  close  enough  to  produce  a  very  high- 
priced  fur. 

Very  few  failures  arose  from  lack  of  proper  feeding.  Some 
losses  came  from  fur  being  rubbed,  owing  to  a  small  entrance  to  the 
burrow,  or  a  tree  so  close  to  the  wire  it  permitted  climbing  and 
falls,  or  lack  of  shade  from  heat  and  from  fright,  when  mothers 
kill  their  young.  Once  when  a  frantic  mother,  who  had  been 
needlessly  alarmed  by  an  outsider's  intrusion,  began  killing  her 
young  —  you  can  imagine  the  feelings  of  the  owner  seeing  pelts 
of  a  potential  value  of  $1000  chewed  to  death  because  curiosity 
had  lured  an  unwelcome  intruder  inside  the  forbidden  enclosure  — 
the  destruction  could  only  be  arrested  by  tossing  a  live  chicken  in 
the  fence.  Another  time,  some  eggs  rolled  in  distracted  the  mother's 
nervousness. 

The  Belgians  have  a  saying  —  "The  eye  of  the  master  maketh 
his  kine  fat."  It  is  the  same  of  fox  farming.  The  little  things, 
which  only  the  lover  of  wild  Hfe  knows  and  notes,  are  the  essential 
things  to   success.     By    1909,   five-months   pups   were   selling   at 


FUR  FARMING  TO  SUPPLY  WORLD  DEMAND    57 

$3000.  By  1913,  they  were  selling  at  ^16,000.  The  craze  became 
to  trap,  not  to  kill  but  to  get  foundation  stock  for  a  fur  farm. 

To  quote  from  the  Canadian  Conservation's  Report  on  Fur 
Farming,  these  findings  may  be  set  down  as  facts  : 

(i)  Silver  parents  always  produce  silver  pups  —  never  red  or 
cross  pups.     (See  possible  exceptions  below.) 

(2)  Red  parents  mostly  produce  red,  but,  occasionally,  some 
cross  or  patch  pups  and  even  a  small  proportion  of  silver  pups  are 
produced. 

(3)  Usually  cross  or  patch  parents  produce  cross  or  patch  pups. 

(4)  When  a  silver  and  pure  red  are  bred,  they  produce  red  pups 
with  blacker  markings  on  the  belly,  neck  and  points  than  the  red 
parents.  The  pups  are  about  the  color  known  to  furriers  as 
"bastard." 

(5)  When  a  bastard  red  fox  and  a  silver  are  mated  often  the 
litter  is  on  the  average  50  per  cent  silver  and  50  per  cent  red. 

(6)  Bastard  red  parents  often  produce  a  black  or  silver  pup  in 
a  litter  —  the  proportion  of  silver  being  about  one  out  of  four. 

(7)  The  exceptions  to  the  above  rules  are  that  sometimes  the 
colors  do  not  segregate,  but  rather  blend,  as  in  roan  cattle  when 
red  and  white  hairs  are  intermixed  and  not  separated  into  distinct 
patches.  Cross  foxes  are  produced  by  mating  a  red  and  a  silver 
and  sometimes,  an  intermediate  color  is  secured  in  the  pups.  Thus, 
in  some  districts,  every  combination  of  the  red,  white  and  black 
color  of  foxes  is  found.     There  are  foxes  which  are : 

Silver  or  Light  Silver.  —  Silver  all  over,  except  possibly  the 
neck ;  dark  below  and  white  only  on  the  tip  of  the  tail. 

Silver  Black  or  Dark  Silver.  —  Black  all  over,  except  the  tip  of 
the  tail  and  the  silvery  hairs  on  the  hips  and  forehead. 

Black.  —  Pure  black  all  over,  except  the  tip  of  the  tail,  with 
perhaps  dark  silvery  hairs  discernible  on  close  examination. 

What  constitutes  a  pure  silver  fox  ? 

The  three  paragraphs  above  will  explain. 

It  is  given  as  a  curious  fact,  while  the  white  tip  is  given  as  the 


58  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

mark  of  identification  of  the  silver  fox,  three  silver  foxes  in  Prince 
Edward  Island  had  no  white  tips  on  their  tails  and  some  others  had 
only  a  few  white  hairs. 

The  explanation  is  sometimes  given  that  silver  foxes  are 
peculiarly  pure  in  Prince  Edward  Island  because  the  province  is  cut 
off  from  the  mainland  and  the  blood  cannot  be  diluted  with  alien 
strains ;  but  that  argument  hardly  holds  good ;  for  some  of  the 
finest  silver  foxes  known  to  the  trade  have  come  from  Labrador  and 
Athabasca,  which  are  not  cut  off.  Highest  prices  are  now  paid  for 
Prince  Edward  Island  foxes ;  but  isn't  that  because  domestication 
has  purified  the  blood  and  care  has  beautified  the  fur  .'*  A  colder 
climate  produces  a  heavier,  stronger  pelt  and  deeper  pelage ;  but 
care  produces  the  sheen  and  the  silky  beauty. 

In  many  Provinces  and  States,  it  is  unlawful  to  keep  fur-bearing 
animals  in  captivity.  These  laws  will  have  to  be  changed  and 
a  license  system  established. 

In  fur  farms,  the  location  of  the  ranch  will  depend  on  the  needs 
of  the  animal.  The  mink  must  have  access  to  water  and  fish  diet. 
So  must  the  otter.  Fruit  diet  helps  the  fur  of  the  marten.  Good 
natural  pasturage  and  ample  ranging  ground  are  required  for  the 
buffalo.  It  may  surprise  the  American  trade  to  include  the  buffalo 
as  a  fur  bearer ;  and  at  the  big  spring  sale  in  Montreal,  the  general 
trade's  lack  of  appreciation  of  the  buffalo  as  a  fur  bearer  came 
out  in  the  fact  that  of  buffalo  heads  and  buffalo  pelts  sent  down  from 
Wainwright  Park,  the  hides  sold  at  ^75  —  presumably  for  floor  rugs 
—  and  the  heads  sold  at  $1200.  Yet  in  the  old  days  in  the  North- 
west, when  buffalo  were  more  plentiful  than  cattle,  there  was  no 
pelt  that  gave  the  same  degree  of  warmth  with  the  same  light 
weight.  The  hide  was  proof  against  any  and  all  weather.  Damp 
did  not  mat  it.  Sunlight  did  not  fade  it;  and  the  skin  was  tougher 
than  shoe  leather.  As  to  the  beauty,  that  depended  on  the  Indian 
dressing  and  the  season  when  the  hide  had  been  taken ;  but  with 
dyeing  and  dressing  firms  that  can  transform  muskrat  into  a  perfect 
imitation  of  Alaska  seal,  a  well-dressed  buffalo  can  be  made  into 


FUR  FARMING  TO  SUPPLY  WORLD  DEMAND     59 

the  best  imitation  of  beaver  on  the  market,  with  twice  the  durability 
of  beaver.  In  the  old  North-west  days,  I  have  seen  buffalo  coats 
dressed  solely  by  the  Indians  and  a  local  taxidermist,  which  required 
two  looks  to  distinguish  them  from  beaver.  They  are  a  darker 
brown  and  a  more  yellow  brown.  The  hair  has  less  wave  to  it 
and  more  curl,  less  down  and  more  pelage  thick  as  horse  hair ;  but 
it  lacked  gloss  under  the  old  treatment.  The  trouble  to-day  is 
the  trade  does  not  know  buffalo  well  enough  to  create  a  demand  for 
it;  and  that  demand  will  probably  have  to  be  created  by  some 
enterprising  dressing  firm ;  and  this  cannot  be  done  till  more  hides 
come  on  the  market. 

The  skunk  farm  must  be  isolated  owing  to  the  odor.  So  must 
the  fox  farm  with  the  added  need  for  entire  seclusion  from  prying 
visitors,  who  alarm  the  timid  fox.  Persian  lamb  and  karakul 
and  krimmer  sheep  farming  has  not  been  tried  long  enough  in  America 
to  set  down  many  findings  as  facts,  except  that  up  to  the  present, 
the  skins  coming  from  the  Texas  farms  and  California  —  where  the 
climate  more  closely  resembles  Bokhara  —  are  superior  to  the  skins 
coming  from  the  Northern  experiments  in  sheep  farming.  "We 
could  not  tell  the  Texas  skins  from  the  best  Bokharas  that  came 
on  the  market  this  spring,"  said  a  foremost  New  York  dresser  to 
me. 

Fox  ranches  need  woodland  for  shade  and  screens  to  hide. 
The  ground  must  be  well  drained  and  dry.  The  climate  must  be 
cold  enough  to  produce  a  heavy  pelage.  The  ranch  must  have 
access  to  good  food  and  must  be  located  where  foundation  stock 
can  be  increased  by  new  blood,  wherever  perfect  specimens  are 
obtainable. 

Subsoil  of  all  burrows  must  go  to  hard  pan,  down  to  which  the 
fencing  must  be  buried.  Always  the  under  surface  fencing  must 
be  wire.  Sometimes  the  wire  is  reenforced  with  sheet  iron,  some- 
times with  cement.  The  top  of  the  fence  must  hang  over  inside  to 
prevent  climbing  up  inside.  Trees  should  not  be  close  enough  to 
the  fence  to  permit  a  climb  and  a  jump ;    but  grape  vines  up  the 


6o  THE  FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

fence,  or  berries  help ;  for  foxes,  martens  and  mink  all  like  a  flesh 
diet  mixed  with  vegetable  or  fruit  rations  ;  and  the  skin  shows  sheen 
from  such  mixed  diet.  It  is  notorious  in  the  North  where  the 
weasel  family  have  to  live  on  fish  and  mice  and  ground  moles  and 
birds  only  —  owing  to  frost  or  floods  winter  killing  the  berries  — 
that  the  fur  has  not  as  fine  a  sheen  as  in  seasons  when  blueberries 
and  wild  cranberries  and  raspberries  supply  a  balanced  diet;  just 
as  it  is  well  known  in  seasons  when  a  curious  scourge  carries  off  the 
rabbit,  the  lynx  fur  may  be  thick  and  heavy,  but  has  neither  the 
sheen  nor  the  softness  of  a  winter  when  the  flesh  hunters  have  full 
fed  stomachs.  To  those  kindly  souls,  who  deprecate  trapping, 
I  would  call  attention  to  the  words  "flesh  hunters"  and  all  the 
cruelty  in  wild  life  so  implied.  Run  over  the  varieties  of  the  60 
fur-bearing  animals  known  to  the  trade !  You  can  count  on  your 
two  hands  those  that  are  not  flesh  eaters,  whose  very  life  does  not 
depend  on  the  ravenous  tooth  and  claw.  All  this  cruelty,  fur 
farming  obviates,  if  it  does  not  abolish.  Death  comes  with  a  quick 
blow,  a  silent  shot,  tongs  that  break  the  neck  at  a  clip  quick  as  the 
instruments  of  an  operating  surgeon,  or  in  the  case  of  small  animals, 
chloroform  in  a  painless  death. 

It  hardly  needs  telling  that  post  holes  for  a  fur  farm  must  be 
four  to  five  feet  deep  and  the  wood  treated  with  creosote  to  prevent 
rotting.  You  can't  afford  a  wobbly  fence  with  nine  pups  inside 
worth  all  the  way  from  $1800  for  the  young  males  to  $10,000  for 
a  perfectly  marked  mother. 

In  the  very  centre  of  the  runway  should  be  the  keeper's  house. 
The  size  of  the  pens  varies  all  the  way  from  one-quarter  of  an  acre 
up  and  down ;  but  always  the  wild  animal  to  live  naturally  must 
have  ranging  ground.  Details  of  the  fox  houses  vary  on  every 
ranch,  but  the  entrance  runway  must  be  long  enough  to  imitate 
a  burrow  and  large  enough  to  avoid  rubbing  the  shoulders  and 
rump  of  the  fox  passing  in  and  out.  Before  the  litter  comes,  the 
mates  should  be  separated  but  put  in  adjoining  pens  where  they 
can  be  company  to  each  other  through  the  fence.     Special  feeding 


FUR  FARMING  TO  SUPPLY  WORLD  DEMAND    6i 

should  precede  the  birth  of  the  family  as  in  all  domesticated  animals. 
Water  pans  and  feed  tins  must  be  kept  fly  clean,  germ  clean  and 
spotless.  The  litter  usually  comes  some  fifty  days  after  mating 
in  January,  which  gives  ample  time  for  the  young  fox  to  come  into 
good  fur  by  the  following  December. 

It  seems  ridiculous,  but  a  moment's  thought  shows  it  necessary, 
to  have  a  cat  with  young  kittens  on  the  spot,  when  the  fox  mother 
brings  forth  her  young.  In  case  of  anything  going  wrong  with  the 
mother,  the  little  blind  puppies  are  fed  a  la  wet  nurse  with  the  cat. 
Some  have  been  brought  up  on  the  bottle,  but  that  is  too  ticklish 
a  job  to  recommend.  Blindness  lasts  14  to  18  days.  The  nest 
is  left  the  fourth  week,  and  weaning  takes  place  about  the  third 
month.  Litters  come  once  a  year  and  run  from  one  to  nine 
puppies. 

Foxes  can  be  induced  to  be  polygamous  but  are  naturally  mo- 
nogamous and  they  ordinarily  bring  forth  young  for  ten  or  eleven 
years.  That  is,  a  good  mother  can  be  depended  on  for  from  $25,000 
to  $50,000  of  pelts  in  a  lifetime.  Very  few  animals  can  beat  this 
record  for  profit. 

The  Canadian  Conservation  Commission's  Report  gives  these 
directions  for  judging  a  silver  fox  skin  : 

"The  condition  of  the  pelt  in  respect  to  primeness,  proper  killing, 
skinning,  drying  and  shipping  is  important.  Skins  may  be  blue 
or  unprime ;  springy,  when  the  hips  and  shoulders  are  worn  and 
the  hair  loose;  dirty,  shot,  chewed,  heated  or  greasy.  In  such 
cases  their  value  is  largely  decreased. 

The  skin  value  of  the  live  animal  may  be  judged  from  the 
following  standards  : 

Color.  —  Glossy  black  on  neck,  and  wherever  no  silver  hairs 
are  found.  The  black  must  be  of  a  bluish  cast  all  over  the  body 
rather  than  a  reddish.  The  under  fur  must  also  be  dark  colored. 
The  fur  of  silver  and  black  foxes  is  a  dark  slate  next  to  the  skin. 

Silver  hairs.  —  Pure  silver  bands  —  not  white  nor  very  promi- 
nent.    In  the  costliest  skins  there  are  only  a  few  silver  hairs,  which 


62  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

are  well  scattered  over  the  pelt.  Flakiness,  which  is  the  appearance 
of  whitish  silver  hairs  placed  close  together  in  patches,  is  objec- 
tionable. 

Texture.  —  Buyers  pass  judgment  on  the  skins  by  drawing  the 
hand  over  the  fur.  The  softest  fur  is  the  most  valuable.  The 
quality  of  softness  is  referred  to  as  "  silkiness." 

Gloss.  —  The  sheen  must  be  evident.  It  is  caused  by  the 
perfect  health  of  the  animal  and  the  fineness  of  the  hair,  as  well 
as  by  hereditary  Influences.  Woods  and  humid  atmosphere  also 
favor  this  important  quality. 

Weight.  —  A  good  fox  skin  will  weigh  at  least  one  pound,  the 
weight  usually  varying  from  ten  to  nineteen  ounces.  The  thick, 
long  fur  makes  the  weight.  This  is  a  very  important  point,  as  heavy 
fur  is  more  durable  and  handsome. 

Size.  —  The  value  of  silver  fox  pelts  increases  with  the  size. 

Prices  for  pelts  and  breeding  stock  have  already  been  given. 
The  New  York  Stock  Exchange  and  the  Chicago  Wheat  Pit  have 
sometimes  been  censured  for  dealing  in  options  and  futures,  but  in 
Prince  Edward  Island,  the  puppies  of  well-marked  silver  foxes  are 
usually  purchased  by  option  long  before  they  are  born. 

The  only  imitation  of  silver  fox  is  what  is  called  "  the  pointed 
fox,"  a  red  fox  or  cross  fox  dyed  by  hand  lustrous  black  with  the 
silver  hairs  set  In,  or  glued  ;  or  a  fine  Arctic  fox  dyed  black,  with  the 
tips  of  some  hairs  waxed  till  the  black  goes  on  the  other  hairs  when 
the  wax  is  removed,  but  this  last  process  is  no  longer  in  vogue.  As 
told  elsewhere  the  test  of  a  dyed  skin  is  —  first  the  undyed  under- 
skin  is  white;  the  dyed  is  golden  or  darkened  by  the  dye.  Hairs 
glued  on  can  be  detected.  A  white  tip  must  be  set  on  the  tall  to 
imitate  the  silver  fox;  and  this  can  be  detected  by  the  end  of  the 
tail,  or  the  white  hairs  set  in.  But  always,  the  dyed  silver  fox  is 
never  as  glossy  and  shiny  as  the  natural  silver  fox. 

Of  fox  skins,  1,337,000  pelts  are  yearly  used  In  the  fur  trade. 
How  many  of  these  are  silver  fox  skins,  it  is  impossible  to  say, 
certainly  not  1%.     Until  over  10%  are  silver  fox  skins,  there  is 


FUR  FARMING  TO  SUPPLY  WORLD  DEMAND    63 

little  likelihood  of  the  price  slumping;  and  if  the  price  of  such  a 
beautiful  fur  falls  in  price,  it  will  increase  the  demand  for  the  fur. 

When  you  come  to  the  fox  farming  of  Alaska,  distinctions  must 
be  made  between  the  white  Arctic  fox  or  polar  fox,  and  the  blue 
fox.  Scientifically,  they  may  be  the  same  family  of  foxes.  As  to 
pelts,  they  are  not.  The  white  fox  is  brown  in  summer,  with  sides 
roan  or  drab.  The  winter  pelt  has  long  pure  white  hairs  above  the 
pelage.  The  blue  fox  is  gray  blue  all  the  year  round  and  is  found 
slightly  south  of  the  Arctic  fox's  range.  It  comes  from  Greenland, 
Iceland,  Alaska,  and  its  pelt  sells  at  many  times  the  value  of  a  white 
fox.  Blue  foxes  have  been  imported  to  Prince  Edward  Island 
from  Alaska.  They  have  not  yet  succeeded  as  a  commercial 
possibility,  whereas  red  foxes  brought  to  the  Prince  Edward  Island 
ranches  from  Alaska  are  improving  their  strains  and  other  strains. 
The  climate  in  Prince  Edward  Island  is  probably  too  mild  for  the 
blue  fox  to  thrive,  just  as  it  is  notorious  that  blonde  people  do  not 
stand  tropical  heat  as  well  as  brunettes  and  dark  pigment  races. 

On  the  islands  off  Alaska,  blue  fox  farming  is  successful.  No 
outlay  is  required  for  fencing.  The  foxes  are  protected  from  the 
ravages  of  wolves  and  they  have  an  abundant  supply  of  sea  food, 
fish,  crabs,  seal  meat,  sea  birds,  sea  gull  eggs  laid  on  the  naked 
rocks. 

These  foxes  mate  in  February  and  March  and  bring  forth  their 
young  in  April  and  May,  three  to  six. 

Blue  fox  skins  have  of  late  run  in  price  from  ^75  up,  where  white 
fox  skins  seldom  cross  $60  and  average  low  as  $10  to  $30  for  poorer 
grades.  Breeding  pairs  for  blue  fox  can  be  purchased  from  the 
Bureau  of  Fisheries  of  the  Department  of  Commerce  and  Labor 
at  ^200  a  pair.  Islands  for  blue  fox  breeding  can  be  leased  at  $100 
a  year.  Near  Kadiak  is  an  island  fur  farm  with  1000  blue  foxes ; 
and  since  the  Government  took  hold  of  the  management  of  the  Seal 
Island,  700  to  1000  blue  foxes  a  year  have  been  trapped  there.  At 
last  reports,  there  were  some  30  islands  leased  in  Alaska  for  blue 
fox  farming.     Unlike  fox  farming  In  Prince  Edward  Island,  In  the 


64  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

fox  farming  of  Alaska,  the  foxes  are  not  confined  in  pens  but  left 
running  wild. 

When  seal  killing  dropped  off  on  the  Seal  Islands  in  the  '90's 
blue  fox  life  also  decreased,  evidently  from  starvation,  or  lack  of 
abundant  meat. 

Great  care  is  taken  in  Alaska  to  kill  none  but  prime  skins,  and 
for  this  purpose  box  traps  are  used  instead  of  steel,  poison  or  rifle. 
If  the  fox  trapped  is  found  not  to  be  full  grown,  to  have  defective 
fur,  to  be  a  female  with  young,  it  is  let  out.  Before  the  fox  can 
be  killed,  it  must  be  examined  by  a  government  inspector  who 
decides  from  color  of  the  fur,  age  of  the  animal,  general  heft,  whether 
it  should  be  kept  to  multiply  its  kind  or  killed.  The  teeth  are 
examined  for  the  age.  Each  animal  let  go  is  branded.  No,  don't 
scream.  They  are  not  branded  with  red  hot  irons.  A  ring  one 
inch  wide  is  cut  with  scissors  in  the  fur  of  the  tail  and  the  little 
captive  is  let  hop  off.  If  a  blue  fox  so  branded  is  caught  by  a  fur 
trapper,  its  fur  will  not  be  passed  by  the  government  inspector 
but  is  confiscated.  Blue  fox  pelts  are  prime  only  from  November 
to  January. 

White  foxes  are  found  in  litters  of  blue,  but  they  are  inferior 
pelts  ;  and  the  government  game  wardens  are  trying  to  exterminate 
white  foxes  on  the  blue  fox  farm  islands.  Every  Arctic  fox  enter- 
ing a  trap  is  killed.  The  Indians  are  allowed  to  shoot  them  under 
any  circumstances.  Very  little  disease  is  found  among  blue  foxes, 
but  the  infant  mortality  is  high,  owing  to  the  mothers  whelping 
their  young  on  naked  damp  rocky  burrow,  or  on  the  open  rock. 
In  10  years  the  average  of  blue  foxes  trapped  in  Alaskan  Islands 
has  run  from  700  to  1400,  about  half  of  which  have  been  turned 
loose  for  breeders,  the  other  half  coming  out  as  pelts  to  the  trade. 

At  first  the  attempt  was  made  as  down  on  the  St.  Lawrence 
with  silver  foxes,  to  save  all  females,  kill  all  the  males  but  a  few 
and  force  polygamy ;  but  the  fox  did  not  thrive  under  man's  regu- 
lation of  an  animal's  morals ;  and  now  enough  males  are  left  for 
monogamous  mating;   and  blue  fox  life  is  increasing  faster. 


Types  of  Badger  and  Lynx  and  Wolf  Skin  Effects. 


Very  Fine  Gaon  Coat. 


FUR  FARMING  TO  SUPPLY  WORLD  DEMAND    65 

In  Alaska,  the  hunting  of  blue  fox  by  dogs  has  been  prohibited 
since  1918;  as  the  dogs  injure  the  fur  and  maul  foxes  which  are 
branded  not  to  be  taken.  Latest  reports  of  the  fur  farms  in  Alaska 
show  a  tendency  to  provide  pens  and  corrals  for  the  silvers  and  reds 
as  in  Prince  Edward  Island,  but  to  let  the  blues  run  free.  One 
island  farmer  in  1918  shipped  out  224  blue  pelts  and  15  white,  from 
which  his  farm  yielded  ^14,000.  He  had  been  operating  since 
191 2.  The  greatest  loss  of  life  in  the  blue  fox  farms  was  from  the 
foxes  fighting  among  themselves  and  from  the  ravages  of  eagles 
on  the  young  pups.  One  farmer  paid  the  Indians  a  bonus  for  eagles 
killed  ;  and  in  10  years  he  numbered  1000  eagle  claws. 

From  Alaska,  for  which  the  United  States  paid  ^7,200,cxx),  more 
than  $80,000,000  of  furs  have  been  taken.  In  1918,  more  than 
$2,000,000  of  furs  were  shipped,  of  which  9000  pelts  were  beaver, 
1400  blue  fox,  4500  white  fox,  7600  lynx,  1000  marten,  24,000  mink, 
1600  otter,  I  sea  otter,  34,800  seal. 

These  figures  have  their  own  lesson  for  Canada.  North  of 
Athabasca  and  Labrador,  she  has  the  great  fur  preserves  of  the  con- 
tinent. Let  her  farm  it  as  carefully  as  Uncle  Sam  is  fur  farming 
Alaska,  or  Prince  Edward  Island,  the  silver  fox. 


CHAPTER  VI 

FUR  FARMING  FOR  BROADTAIL,  PERSIAN  LAMB,  ASTRAKHAN 

AND  KRIMMER 

It  is  said  there  are  5000  species  of  mammals,  of  which  23  have 
been  domesticated  and  60  are  fur  bearers. 

Broadtail,  Persian  lamb,  Astrakhan  and  krimmer  represent  the 
dividing  line  and  meeting  place  between  these  two.  They  are 
both  domesticated  and  fur  bearers.  Perhaps  our  children's  children 
will  live  to  see  the  day  when  all  the  fur  bearers  are  domesticated. 
Perhaps  that  is  what  the  prophet  meant  when  he  foretold  the  lion 
lying  down  with  the  lamb.  Certainly,  the  cat  suckling  the  fox 
kittens  may  be  a  prototype  of  what  is  coming. 

To  clear  the  decks  of  common  misconceptions  first  —  Persian 
lamb  isn't  Persian  lamb  at  all.  It  comes  from  Bokhara,  Turkestan, 
Central  Asia ;  but  as  it  first  came  to  European  markets  by  Persian 
caravans,  it  took  the  name  Persian  lamb. 

Second,  the  curliest  and  glossiest  Persian  lamb  is  not  obtained 
by  killing  the  mother  to  get  the  unborn  kid.  The  kid  to  preserve 
the  gloss  and  curl  must  be  killed  within  a  few  days  of  birth,  soon 
enough  to  avoid  the  reddish  tinge  that  comes  to  the  fur  and  can 
be  seen  by  holding  it  up  between  the  eye  and  the  light. 

Sheraz  is  half-Persian  lamb.  It  comes  from  the  south  of  Persia 
and  resembles  wool  more  than  fur. 

Next,  Astrakhan  Is  not  dog  skin.  It  is  a  lamb  skin  from  the 
south  of  Russia. 

Gray  Persian  lamb  is  really  krimmer,  lamb  from  the  Crimean 
region  of  Russia. 

66 


FUR  FARMING   FOR  BROADTAIL  67 

The  farming  of  these  furs  in  their  native  habitat  does  not  greatly 
concern  the  trade  in  America,  except  as  we  can  transfer  the  farming 
here. 

The  lamb  that  makes  Persian  fur,  grown  to  a  sheep  makes  the 
Bokhara  rug.  Arab  chiefs  are  to  this  trade  what  chief  factors 
used  to  be  to  the  American  fur  trade.  They  are  the  middlemen 
between  the  trade  and  the  producer.  Chieftains  yearly  bring 
40,000  to  50,000  skins  each  to  the  Far  Eastern  markets.  Some- 
times the  herds  are  driven  to  market  alive,  the  lambs  killed,  the 
flesh  sold  as  meat,  the  hides  as  fur.  At  other  times,  the  hides  are 
brought  in  long,  slow-moving  caravans  and  sold  as  dressed  fur. 
The  tightest  curl  and  glossiest  black  bring  the  best  prices  for  fur; 
and  for  fine  fur  only  the  saddle  of  the  back  Is  used.  Gray  skins 
are  sold  also ;  but  gray  are  also  sold  dyed  black.  As  in  every  other 
fur,  the  care  and  the  nourishment  of  the  mother  before  bringing 
forth  her  young  determine  the  fine  quality  of  the  pelt. 

By  caravans  it  takes  about  the  same  time  to  bring  the  skins 
from  Bokhara  to  the  Russian  markets  as  to  bring  the  skins  from 
Alaska  or  Mackenzie  River  to  St.  Louis  —  60  to  70  days.  The 
pelts  are  brought  out  sewed  face  to  face  in  pairs  done  up  In  bales  of 
160  pairs ;  and  in  one  caravan  will  be  400  bales  worth  all  the  way 
from  $100,000  up. 

The  skins  are  first  cleaned  in  running  water,  then  cured  in  tanks 
of  salt,  barley  flour  and  water,  then  scraped  with  a  dull  knife  from 
all  flesh  and  hung  to  dry  12  hours  in  the  sun.  They  are  washed 
again  in  running  water  and  sprinkled  with  barley  flour.  They 
are  then  sorted  and  stamped  back  against  back,  and  done  up  in 
bales  for  the  shipment  to  market. 

Dr.  Young  of  Texas,  the  first  American  to  rear  karakul  lamb 
successfully  in  America,  says  there  are  six  distinct  classes  of  these 
fur-bearing  sheep.  It  was  in  1908  he  imported  fifteen  head  to 
America.  It  was  only  when  he  crossed  Karakul  Afghan  with  an 
Arabi  strain  that  he  produced  a  skin  bringing  a  price  of  $6.50  a  pelt. 
In  191 2,  Dr.  Young  imported  some  true  Bokharas.    Fur  farmers 


68  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

who  buy  the  first  strain  will  not  realize  a  good  fur  price.  Those 
who  buy  descendants  of  the  second  importation  will ;  and  American 
traders  tell  me  descendants  of  the  second  importation  are  now 
coming  on  the  market.  From  Dr.  Young's  original  stock  at  Belen, 
Texas,  have  spread  flocks  to  Texas,  New  Mexico,  Kansas,  Mary- 
land and  Prince  Edward  Island.  "^One  of  the  tests  of  the  fur  pro- 
ducing strains  from  the  wool  strain  is  the  absence  of  soft  under 
wool  in  the  pelage.  In  any  case,  the  flock  of  the  karakul  is  always 
as  good  a  seller  as  our  domestic  sheep ;  and  if  the  herd  does  not 
grade  up  as  fur,  it  may  as  wool.  The  quaHties  that  distinguish  fur 
from  wool  are  —  tight  curl,  smallness  and  crispness  of  the  wave, 
lustre  and  silkiness  of  the  skin.  All  Persian  lambs  to-day  are  im- 
proved by  a  brush  lustre  of  dye.  In  fact,  good  Persian  lamb  like 
good  seal  is  one  of  the  dyed  skins  that  goes  in  first  rank. 

Lambs  to  be  used  for  fur  should  be  killed  within  5  days  of  birth. 
After  5  days,  the  curl  coarsens  and  commands  the  price  of  a  common 
fur ;  and  after  six  weeks,  the  skin  may  be  described  as  wool.  Slinks, 
or  still-born  lambs,  are  the  finest  fur  of  all.  Baby  lamb,  or  broad- 
tail is  the  name  usually  applied  to  these  still-born  or  very  young 
lambs.  Before  the  War,  $12  was  cheap  for  such  a  pelt.  Since  the 
War,  prices  have  increased  140%.  Natives  of  Bokhara  are  as 
jealous  of  selling  any  of  their  sheep  as  trappers  in  the  Canadian 
North  are  of  their  fur  secrets.  Sheep  on  the  ranch  cost  $60  and 
must  then  be  brought  out  at  great  risk  thousands  of  miles.  If  the 
sheep  brought  out  by  Dr.  Young  of  Texas  finally  multiply  into  trade 
proportions,  it  will  spell  the  end  of  the  exclusive  Persian  lamb  trade 
for  Bokhara  of  1,500,000  pelts  yearly;  and  just  before  the  War, 
the  Emir  of  the  district  had  issued  an  edict  prohibiting  the  ex- 
portation of  Bokharas. 

Poor  Persian  lamb  skins  do  not  bring  2^^  each.  Good  skins 
run  from  $3.50  to  ^20.  The  average  of  7229  skins  recently  sold  in 
Montreal  was  $8.40. 

The  durability  of  Persian  lamb  depends  primarily  on  the  first 
dressing,  second  on  the  dyeing ;  and  the  principal  object  is  to  avoid 


FUR  FARMING  FOR  BROADTAIL  69 

cracking.  Too  thin  skin  can  be  reenforced  but  cracked  skin  will 
rip.  The  test  as  told  elsewhere  is  to  stretch  slightly.  If  there 
is  a  sound  of  an  impending  rip,  beware  the  skin. 

Pure  bred  stock  to-day  is  selling  at  from  $500  to  $1000 ;  and  with 
those  prices  ruling,  while  the  same  financial  success  may  not  reward 
the  Persian  lamb  farmers  as  has  rewarded  the  silver  fox  farmers, 
who  get  9  puppies  increase  from  a  pair  a  year,  still  the  Persian  lamb 
is  not  a  monogamous  gentleman.  He  has  up  to  20  wives,  and  20 
lambs  a  year  from  one  ^500  sire  with  hides  at  $S  to  $15,  and  flesh 
at  30  to  40^  a  pound,  with  the  cheap  range  of  feeding  ground  on 
which  sheep  subsist  —  mean  a  profit  that  may  easily  place  Persian 
lamb  farming  second  to  silver  fox,  and  such  mink  and  sable  and 
marten  farms  as  are  still  in  an  experimental  stage. 

Two  official  reports  have  come  out  on  karakul  sheep  farming 
in  the  United  States  and  Canada ;  one  by  the  Animal  Bureau  of  the 
Agricultural  Department,  Washington,  the  other  by  Dr.  Young, 
himself,  whose  success  has  exceeded  his  expectations.  Says  the 
U.  S.  Year  Book  of  191 5  :  "Since  1909,  fifty-four  of  these  sheep  have 
been  brought  to  the  United  States.  The  importations  have  con- 
sisted chiefly  of  rams  which  have  been  mated  with  ewes  to  determine 
what  class  of  ewes  will  produce  lambs  having  good  skins.  Flocks 
owned  in  Texas,  Kansas  and  New  York  now  comprise  over  1000 
head  of  sheep  having  one-third  or  three-quarters  Karakul  blood. 
Besides  these  grades  there  are  60  rams  and  ewes  that  are  either 
imported  or  descended  from  imported  stock. 

"The  fur  commonly  known  as  Persian  lamb  is  taken  from  the 
young  Karakul  lambs.  The  Persian  lamb  used  in  the  United  States 
is  produced  chiefly  in  Central  Asia,  in  Bokhara.  The  future  of 
the  industry  in  this  country  depends  on  the  results  of  mating 
Karakul  rams  with  our  ewes. 

"The  furs  are  known  as  Persian  lambs,  Astrakhan,  Broadtail 
and  Krimmer.  Persians,  Astrakhan  and  Broadtail  skins  are  all 
black  in  color,  but  vary  in  the  character  of  the  curl.  Persians 
have  the  most  pronounced,  most  uniform  and  tightest  curl  and  the 


70  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

greatest  value.  Astrakhans  have  longer  hair,  the  curl  is  more  open 
and  usually  has  less  lustre  or  gloss  than  th€  Persian.  The  Moiree 
Astrakhan  is  a  very  soft  light  skin,  having  straight  hair,  but  a  very 
satiny  lustre.  Broadtails  are  taken  from  lambs  prematurely  born. 
Skins  of  this  class  are  soft  and  pliable,  as  well  as  light  in  weight. 
Their  hair  is  shorter  than  in  Persian  skins  and  instead  of  being 
tightly  curled,  exhibits  a  very  attractive  wavy  pattern.  Krimmer 
is  a  gray  fur  produced  mainly  in  the  Crimean  peninsula. 

"Between  1895  and  1913,  prices  have  increased  180%. " 

Since  the  Agricultural  Department  made  this  report,  prices 
have  again  advanced,  largely  because  of  the  shortage  of  supplies 
owing  to  the  War. 

"The  sheep  takes  its  name  from  Kara-Kul  —  the  black  lake  — 
a  village  in  Bokhara.  The  elevation  of  the  area  is  about  8000  feet. 
The  summers  are  very  hot  and  dry.  The  best  feed  occurs  from  the 
middle  of  March  to  the  middle  of  May,  then  vegetation  dries  up. 
The  number  of  sheep  in  the  territory  is  estimated  at  from  three  to 
four  millions,  and  the  annual  export  of  lamb  skins  runs  at  about 
1,500,000.  The  skins  are  collected  by  traders  and  resold  at  the 
annual  summer  fair  at  Nijni  Novgorod  in  Russia,  272  miles  by 
rail  East  from  Moscow.  About  166  skins  are  packed  in  a  bale; 
and  become  the  property  largely  of  Germans  from  Leipzic.  In 
Leipzic,  the  skins  are  sorted  for  export  and  some  dyed,  though 
usually  the  dyeing  is  not  done  until  the  skins  reach  the  firms  by 
which  they  are  made  into  wearing  apparel. 

"The  foundation  of  the  present  fur-bearing  sheep  was  the 
early  native  Arabi.  The  blood  of  the  Arabi  in  combination  with  the 
black  Danadar  produced  the  sheep  kept  at  Karakul.  With  the 
rapid  rise  of  values,  the  size  of  the  flocks  increased.  The  Karakul 
is  a  sheep  of  medium  size,  with  black  face  and  legs,  and  a  long 
coarse  fleece  of  some  shades  of  gray.  The  rams  are  horned  and  the 
ewes  polled.  The  body  of  the  Karakul  has  not  a  close  resemblance 
to  any  breeds  in  America.  It  has  the  narrow  back  and  flat  sides 
common  to  sheep  not  bred  for  meat.     A  very  distinctive  feature 


FUR  FARMING  FOR  BROADTAIL  71 

is  the  shape  and  size  of  the  tail.  It  is  described  as  *  Broadtail.' 
Being  quite  short  and  very  broad  next  to  the  body,  fat  accumulates 
and  forms  a  triangular  development  that  may  weigh  5  to  6  pounds, 
extending  towards  the  hocks. 

"In  some  specimens  of  the  breed,  there  is  a  noticeable  amount 
of  finer  and  softer  wool  near  the  skin.  This  undercoat  is  not 
desired,  as  it  is  stated  that  the  lambs  having  the  best  curl  and 
lustre  come  from  parents  having  the  least  fine  wool.  Karakul 
fleeces  are  commonly  sold  as  carpet  wool. 

"The  Karakul  is  adapted  to  areas  of  extreme  temperatures 
and  limited  rainfall.  Reports  from  Texas  state  that  the  Karakuls 
were  better  able  to  resist  cold  storms  than  sheep  of  other  breeds. 
The  conformation  of  the  Karakul  does  not  commend  him  as  a  mut- 
ton producer.  The  use  of  a  Karakul  to  impress  upon  a  flock  bred 
for  mutton  would  sacrifice  a  good  deal  and  not  be  desirable. 

"Only  three  lots  of  Karakul  sheep  have  reached  this  country. 
These  were  all  imported  by  Dr.  C.  C.  Young.  A  number  of  de- 
scendants have  been  sold  to  Prince  Edward  Island,  Canada,  to 
Texas,  Kansas  and  New  York."  I  have  considerably  condensed  the 
Departrnent's  Report,  which  closes  with  these  admonitions  on 
skinning : 

"  Cut  a  straight  line  down  the  belly  and  also  cut  down  on  the  inside 
of  the  legs  to  meet  the  centre  line.  Do  not  cut  off  any  part  of  the 
skin  ;  leave  on  the  ears,  nose  and  tail  to  the  tip.  Be  careful  not  to 
make  unnecessary  cuts.  Stretch  the  skin  evenly  on  a  board,  fur 
side  down,  and  dry  in  a  cool  place.  Do  not  salt  the  skin  or  double 
it  up  for  shipment  purposes.  The  principal  object  is  to  avoid  crack- 
ing the  skin.  See  that  it  is  properly  shaped  when  nailed  down  to 
the  board  and  thoroughly  dried  before  shipping.  The  skin  should 
not  be  sun  dried.  In  packing  a  number  of  skins  the  first  one  should 
be  laid  with  the  flesh  side  downward.  The  second  should  have  the 
fur  side  downward.  The  next  should  be  placed  like  the  first,  and 
so  on.  This  prevents  the  flesh  sides  from  lying  in  contact  with  the 
fur." 


72  THE  FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

It  is  well,  perhaps,  to  add  to  this  Report,  an  official  Report 
issued  by  Dr.  Young,  himself,  who  has  transferred  his  sheep  farm 
to  Kerman,  Fresno  Co.,  California,  especially  as  Dr.  Young's  later 
experiments  do  not  agree  with  the  Agricultural  Report  in  some 
details  as  to  mutton  values. 

"The  Karakul  Desert  Sheep  will  produce  'Persian  Lamb'  and 
'Astrakhan  Fur'  in  the  first  cross  with  domestic  coarse-wool 
breeds.  The  skins  of  the  lambs  when  two  or  three  days  old  being 
used  for  that  purpose.  This  kind  of  fur  is  used  for  coats,  collars, 
caps  and  muflfs  by  the  most  fashionable  set  of  society,  and  according 
to  the  United  States  Department  of  Agriculture,  we  require 
^14,000,000  worth  of  furs  annually. 

"According  to  Armour  and  Swift,  Karakul  mutton  is  free  from 
the  'woolly'  taste  so  often  objectionable  in  our  domestic  breeds, 
and  the  lambs  mature  very  quickly,  in  fact  60-pound  lambs  in  two 
months  are  not  uncommon. 

"Karakul  ewes  compare  favorably  with  milk  goats  and  the  milk 
is  richer  in  fat  than  goat's  milk.  The  fat  globules  are  very  fine 
and  easily  absorbed.  For  ages  the  Karakul  has  been  the  cow  of  the 
Kara  Kum  Desert  of  Central  Asia,  and  the  famous  'Brinza' 
cheese  possesses  the  most  delicious  flavor. 

"The  wool  of  the  mature  sheep  is  very  coarse  and  ideally  adapted 
for  coarse  textiles,  rugs  and  felt  and  21  pounds  of  31-inch  long  staple 
is  the  most  any  Karakul  has  ever  produced  but  being  free  from  the 
fat  and  dirt  of  the  fleece  of  our  domestic  sheep  this  is  an  enormous 
yield.  Under  proper  grading  and  when  of  sufficient  length  Karakul 
wool  brings  a  higher  price  than  does  the  wool  of  our  domestic  breeds. 

"The  Karakul  Desert  Sheep,  which  for  centuries  have  had  to 
compete  with  the  camel  and  the  burro,  will  thrive  and  accumulate 
fat  on  pastures  that  would  starve  our  domestic  breeds.  Short- 
lived weeds  and  the  Sacksaul  brush  closely  resembling  the  chemisa 
of  San  Luis  Obispo  County  is  all  these  animals  have  had  to  feed  on. 
During  the  entire  summer  past  we  grazed  our  sheep  in  Fresno  County 
on  alkali  weeds  and  they  did  well,  and  such  brush  as  Chemisa, 


FUR  FARMING  FOR  BROADTAIL  73 

Rabbit  Brush,  Trefoil,  Tree  Lupine,  Silver  Lupine,  Wild  Radish, 
Scotch  Heather  and  Lathyr  is  relished  by  them.  The  Karakul 
sheep  will  enable  us  to  reclaim  millions  of  acres  of  land  practically 
valueless  to-day. 

"In  point  of  hardiness  no  domestic  animals  in  America  can 
compete  with  the  Karakul  except  the  burro  and  the  Mexican  goat. 
Our  farmers  who  are  anxiously  seeking  for  the  most  effective  means 
by  which  to  destroy  Johnson  grass,  Bermuda  grass,  Morning  Glory, 
Thistles,  etc.,  will  find  the  Karakul  of  inestimable  value. 

"The  Karakul  sheep  are  mixed  hybrids,  native  to  the  deserts 
of  Central  Asia. 

"They  have  been  raised  for  years  by  savage  natives  who  know 
nothing  about  scientific  breeding  and  are  consequently  in-bred  and 
cross-bred ;   there  is  no  fixed  type  in  their  native  country. 

"It  has  taken  eight  years  of  selective  breeding  in  this  country 
to  get  a  semblance  of  type. 

"They  are  now  being  bred  of  two  types  : 

"The  Karakul  Arabi,  or  smaller  type. 

"The  Karakul  Doozbai,  or  larger  type.  We  also  have  certain 
specimens  that  can  be  considered  as  belonging  to  the  intermediate 
type. 

"They  will  stand  the  greatest  extremes  of  heat  and  cold  and  will 
thrive  in  any  country  as  long  as  their  pasture  is  well  drained. 

"There  are  500  known  varieties  of  weeds  in  the  United  States 
and  the  Karakul  will  eat  490  of  them. 

"There  is  as  yet  no  registry  of  Karakul  sheep  and  the  types 
are  not  fixed,  therefore  we  sell  only  tested  Karakuls  where  breeders 
choose  to  raise  them  for  Persian  fur  only. 

"As  Mutton  Producers: 

"They  are  the  hardiest  and  best  rustlers  of  the  sheep  family 
and  will  thrive  on  range  which  would  not  sustain  our  native  sheep. 
During  the  terrible  drought  of  New  Mexico  during  19 18,  where 
our  flocks  were  pasturing,  even  the  goats  did  not  show  anywhere 
near  the  hardiness  of  the  Karakuls. 


74  THE  FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

"Their  lambs  are  exceptionally  strong  at  birth,  will  mature 
about  one-third  earlier  than  those  of  our  native  sheep  and  are  equal 
in  size  to  our  largest  native  breeds.  In  fact,  the  largest  of  the 
Doozbai  Karakuls,  greatly  excel  in  size. 

"Being  free  of  the  woolly  taste  of  our  native  sheep  the  fat  which 
is  the  butter  of  Central  Asia,  is  ideal  for  cooking  purposes.  Re- 
member Karakuls  require  no  feeding  to  accumulate  great  quantities 
of  fat.  The  meat  of  the  Karakul  is  free  from  the  sheepy  taste  and 
has  a  delicious  flavor  of  its  own. 

"They  belong  to  the  broadtail  and  not  to  the  fat-rump  breeds, 
and  the  fat  is  better  distributed  over  the  carcass  than  is  the  case 
with  the  Persian  fat-rump  sheep  with  which  the  Karakul  is  some- 
times confused.  They  are  able  to  produce  as  much  fat  on  weeds 
and  in  the  same  length  of  time  as  native  sheep  fed  on  alfalfa  and  mile 
maize.  See  tests  made  by  the  Hon.  John  M.  Wyatt,  treasurer  of 
the  Panhandle  &  Southwestern  Stock  Men's  Association,  vice- 
president  First  National  Bank  of  El  Paso,  Texas. 

"The  pelts  of  the  lambs  of  this  type,  which  die  unavoidably 
are  worth  from  $4  to  $10  each,  which,  in  a  season's  lambing,  is  a 
point  worth  considering.  Among  those  prematurely  born,  one 
often  finds  skins  of  rare  value  called  'broadtail,'  baby  lamb, 
'unborn  lamb,'  etc.,  often  valued  at  ^20  wholesale.  The  ewes 
are  not  slaughtered  to  obtain  this  fur  as  some  dishonest  furriers  will 
tell  you. 

"As  Fur  Producers : 

"They  are  the  only  sheep  which  produce  valuable  fur. 

"The  dressed  skins  of  the  Karakul  lambs  are  known  on  the 
fur  market  as  'Persian  Lamb,'  'Broadtail,'  'Baby  Lamb,'  'Kara- 
kul,' 'Astrakhan,'  and  'Krimmer.'  The  different  grades  depend 
on  the  tightness  of  curl,  lustre,  and  degree  of  pigmentation. 

"The  so-called  Persian  sheep  of  this  country  is  not  a  fur-produc- 
ing sheep  at  all  unless  crossed  with  Karakul  rams.  The  name 
'Persian  Lamb'  comes  from  the  fact  the  Persians  were  the  first 
to  export  Karakul  skins  to  European  markets. 


FUR  FARMING  FOR  BROADTAIL  75 

"A  good  skin  from  a  lamb  two  or  three  days  old  with  short  hair, 
tight  curls  and  good  lustre  is  worth  from  $10  to  $20  in  wholesale  lots. 

"Furs  with  more  open  curl  and  less  lustre  sell  for  prices  ranging 
from  $5  to  ^10  each. 

"A  good  fur-producing  Karakul  ram  will  produce  lambs  with 
just  as  good  fur  when  bred  to  a  native  coarse  wool  ewe  which  has 
no  fine  wool  admixture  as  when  bred  to  a  Karakul  ewe  free  from 
fine  wool.  If  a  Karakul  ewe  has  fine  wool  besides  coarse  wool  she 
will  not  produce  as  good  a  skin  as  a  domestic  coarse  wool  ewe  would 
if  free  from  fine  wool. 

"Tight  pipeUke  curl  and  high  lustre  are  what  makes  the  fur 
valuable. 

"The  United  States,  according  to  a  circular  issued  by  the 
Department  of  Agriculture  in  1912,  imports  ^14,000,000  worth  of 
these  furs  each  year. 

"There  is  a  big  future  in  raising  Karakul  sheep  of  either  variety 
for  breeding  stock  before  any  will  be  slaughtered  for  fur  in  this 
country. 

"If  you  want  a  ram  for  the  production  of  mutton  almost  any 
good  big  Karakul  ram  will  prove  satisfactory  and  you  will  find  your 
lambs  to  be  strong,  vigorous,  good  rustlers  and  quick  maturing 
besides  producing  Astrakhan  fur. 

"  If  you  want  a  ram  for  the  production  of  fur  it  is  safest  to  buy 
only  a  tested  ram  who  has  produced  progeny  with  the  tight  curled 
fur  of  Persian  Lamb  grade  as  shown  by  the  accompanying  illus- 
trations. 

"It  is  important  that  the  native  ewes  used  for  crossing  be  free 
from  fine  under  wool,  and  be  the  coarse  wool  class,  such  as  Navajos, 
Mexican  Hairy,  Corientes,  Persian  Fat-Rumps,  Black  Faced 
Highlands,  Lincolns  or  Cotswolds. 

"It  has  been  found  that  inbreeding  is  detrimental  to  the  pro- 
duction of  fur. 

"As  Wool  Producers : 

"Up  to  a  few  years  ago,  few  Karakul  breeders  paid  any  attention 


^e  THE  FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

to  the  wool  question,  even  though  Karakul  wool  I2  inches  long 
would  bring  $>i  per  pound.  It  was  also  known  that  Karakul  rams 
shear  from  8  to  21  pounds,  ewes  from  6  to  14  pounds.  Wool  31 
inches  in  length  from  one  ram  sold  at  $z  per  pound.  A  5-months 
old  lamb  sheared  7  pounds,  7  inches  long;  rams  shearing  18  pounds 
in  12  months  are  not  uncommon.  Six  pounds  is  the  least  any 
Karakul  ever  sheared. 

"If  careful  selection  is  practised,  the  Karakul  will  more  than 
hold  its  own  with  any  breed,  although  often  the  wool  does  not 
bring  more  than  any  mixed  wool,  this,  however,  can  be  avoided. 
Where  the  wool  was  properly  selected  it  sold  in  June,  1917,  for  49^, 
which  was  the  price  ordinary  wool  brought. 

"With  careful  breeding,  the  Karakul  will  easily  excel  any  other 
breed  in  America  from  a  wool  standpoint.  I  have  known  half- 
breed  Karakul-Navajos  to  shear  10  pounds,  the  mother  hardly 
clipped  3  pounds.  The  Karakul  will  give  twice  as  much  milk  as 
any  other  breed  in  the  world,  therefore  no  milk  goats  are  kept  in 
the  desert  of  West  Turkestan.  The  famous  'brinza'  cheese  made 
from  Karakul  milk  is  the  best  in  the  world.  The  milk  is  held  by 
the  natives  as  possessing  great  curative  properties  in  all  stages 
of  tuberculosis,  neurasthenia  and  pernicious  anemia.  The  Kara- 
kul is  the  cow  of  the  natives  of  the  Kara-Kum  desert  of  Central 
Asia. 

"Remember  Karakul  ewes  never  disown  their  lambs,  never 
wear  their  teeth  down  and  herd  very  close.  They  can  cover  tre- 
mendous distances  daily  and  live  where  an  Angora  goat  will  starve, 
and  as  browsers  and  destroyers  of  underbrush,  no  domestic  animal 
can  compare  with  them.  Should  be  introduced  in  well-drained 
cut  over  timber  countries,  can  stand  any  climate,  will  thrive  on 
Russian  thistles  and  accumulate  great  quantities  of  fat;  60-pound 
lambs  in  60  days  are  now  the  exception,  but  with  care  can  be  made 
the  rule. 


FUR  FARMING  FOR  BROADTAIL      ^^ 

"October  3,  191 1. 

"Dr.  C.  C.  Young, 
"Dear  Sir: 

"  I  take  great  pleasure  in  testifying  to  the  superior  mutton  quali- 
ties of  the  Asiatic  Karakul  Broad-tail  Sheep  because  I  am  very  much 
interested  in  seeing  a  development  of  this  strain  in  this  country. 

"Our  experience  has  been  that  on  crosses  between  Asiatic 
Karakul  Broad-tail  Sheep  and  one  or  two  other  domestic  varieties, 
lambs  were  obtained  which  at  the  proper  age  weigh  90  to  105  pounds 
and  have  the  most  delicious  flavor,  as  well  as  the  heaviest  yield  of 
mutton. 

"I  hope  you  will  be  successful  in  introducing  this  strain  generally 
because  I  think  it  will  improve  our  Southern  stock,  particularly 
from  a  mutton  standpoint. 

"  Yours  truly,  Armour  &  Company. 
"  H.  E.  Finney,  General  Manager." 

The  pork  packers  of  Chicago  seem  to  corroborate  Dr.  Young's 
claims  in  full. 


CHAPTER  VII 
THE  DYEING  AND  THE  DRESSING  OF  THE  FURS 

More  furs  are  ruined  in  the  dyeing  and  dressing  than  in  the 
hunting. 

If  the  knowledge  of  raw  furs  involves  highly  technical  dis- 
crimination, ten  times  more  so  does  the  knowledge  of  dyeing  and 
dressing ;  and  while  the  secrets  of  the  trapper  may  be  found  out 
by  spying  on  his  trail,  the  secrets  of  the  dyer  cannot ;  for  his  for- 
mula is  written  in  code.  His  laboratories  are  as  secret  as  Masonic 
rites ;  and  in  the  rooms  where  the  final  lustre  is  given  to  such  rare 
furs  as  seal,  grilled  wires  bar  windows  and  locks  bar  doors ;  and 
the  question  is  now  being  tested  in  a  case  before  the  courts  whether 
one  firm  may  hire  away  a  secret  dyer  from  another  firm  and  so 
obtain  possession  of  the  secrets  of  trade  practices  and  not  render 
itself  liable  for  using  "  stolen "  processes.  I  have  no  opinion  to 
express  on  this  hotly  contested  subject.  The  Supreme  Court  will 
pronounce  its  decision  with  which  the  dyers  will  have  to  abide ; 
and  whatever  the  decision,  it  will  be  as  protective  for  the  future  as 
it  is  punitive  for  the  past. 

Vegetable  dyes  hurt  the  skins  of  the  pelt  least.  Indian  dressers 
of  undyed  furs  are  the  most  expert. 

Dyeing  is  often  blamed  for  what  is  really  the  unprime  quality 
of  the  fur.  The  skin  of  the  unprime  fur  has  a  bluish  cast,  just  as 
the  skin  of  the  prime  fur  has  a  creamy  white,  and  the  skin  of  the 
dyed  fur  has  a  golden  cast.  The  pelt  should  be  taken  just  when 
prime.  If  taken  before  prime,  it  may  shed  or  lack  lustre.  If 
taken  after  the  prime,  it  may  show  the  wear  of  the  young  animal's 
fights  and  scampers. 

78 


DYEING  AND   DRESSING  OF   FURS  79 

When  you  examine  fur  closely,  you  find  three  layers  —  the 
rough  over  hairs,  the  thick  pelage  or  fur  proper,  the  down  next  the 
skin.  Open  the  rough  over  hairs  with  your  fingers.  Below  the 
fur  proper  open  to  the  down ;  and  in  the  most  of  furs  when  undyed 
the  fur  is  lighter  in  color  next  to  the  skin.  In  many  furs,  the 
under  fur,  or  down,  is  a  light  drab,  or  pale  blue.  The  beauty  of 
the  pelt  in  fox  is  ascribed  to  the  lustre  and  depth  of  the  over  hair, 
in  beaver  to  the  pelage  proper,  and  in  chinchilla  and  mole  and 
squirrel,  to  the  pelage  and  the  down. 

There  are  only  two  commercial  ways  of  skinning  the  fur  beaver  : 

(i)  The  way  a  sheep  is  skinned,  by  cutting  down  the  belly  and 
opening  off  the  pelt  the  way  a  man  takes  off  his  coat. 

(2)  By  slitting  up  the  hind  legs  and  peeling  off  the  pelt,  the  way 
a  woman  takes  off  her  glove. 

Pelts  skinned  by  a  long  front  cut  are  stretched  flat.  Pelts 
peeled  off  are  stretched  with  a  dull  edged  board  shoved  inside  as 
you  stretch  a  pair  of  shoes  with  a  shoe  tree.  Peeled  pelts  are 
described  as  "cased."  The  pelts  commonly  "cased"  are  fox, 
fisher,  marten,  weasel,  otter,  skunk,  lynx,  cat,  muskrat.  The  pelts 
taken  off  by  an  open  cut  are  beaver,  bear  and  all  the  large  furs. 
Tail  and  claws  should  be  left  on  and  the  shape  of  the  head  left  un- 
impaired. Before  stretching  the  skin,  all  fats  and  flesh  should 
be  carefully  scraped  off;  as  they  will  cause  decomposition  and 
weakening  of  the  skin.  The  fats  of  the  skunk  and  the  seal  are  so 
valuable,  they  are  rendered  into  oil ;  and  in  case  of  the  Hair  Seals 
and  Harp  Seals  of  Newfoundland  and  Labrador,  the  oils  are  valuable 
as  the  pelts. 

The  trapper  should  wrap  each  separate  skin  In  separate  burlap, 
and  sew  the  fine  skins  in  muslin,  and  to  prevent  injury,  they  should 
be  boxed  for  shipment  to  the  buyer.  Either  a  dull  knife,  or  a  bone 
knife,  should  be  used  for  scraping.  Even  the  flat  board  on  which 
the  skin  is  laid  for  scraping  should  have  dulled  edges  to  avoid 
creasing  and  cracking  the  skin,  where  it  will  afterwards  split. 
Some  dealers  say,  "Don't  scrape  the  skin,"  by  which  they  mean, 


8o  THE  FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

when  taking  off  the  flesh,  scrape  the  flesh,  but  don't  abrade  the 
skin.  The  fur  side  should  not  be  exposed  to  the  sun,  and  the  drying 
should  be  done  in  a  cool  place  away  from  artificial  heat,  which 
cracks  soft  skin  just  as  it  ruins  shoe  leather.  Beaver  and  musk- 
rat  should  be  stretched  on  a  hoop.  Coon  should  be  nailed  on  a 
wall  to  dry.  Mink  and  marten  should  be  stretched  very  gently 
lengthwise. 

The  plucking  of  the  coarse  over  hairs  should  be  left  to  the  final 
trade  dresser.  When  Alaska  seal  has  been  plucked,  it  is  drab. 
Up  to  the  time  of  the  War,  the  dyeing  of  seals  excelled  in  London, 
of  Persian  lamb  in  Germany,  and  of  "topping"  over  hairs  in 
France. 

No  general  rule  can  be  given  for  dyeing  except  that  the  closest 
to  the  natural  color  is  always  best  and  that  rule  has  its  great  ex- 
ception in  muskrat  dyed  as  a  perfect  imitation  of  Alaska  seal. 

The  pace  of  improvement  in  the  fur  trade  is  moving  so  fast 
to-day,  that  any  methods  described  as  perfect  this  year  may  be 
discarded  as  obsolete  next  year.  The  Canadian  Conservation 
Report  quotes  the  old  method  of  dressing  furs  : 

"The  older  method  of  dressing  furs,  used  universally  until  the 
introduction  of  machinery  is  to  place  the  skins  in  a  lye  of  alkali ; 
when  the  pelt  has  become  soft,  the  skins  are  tubbed,  and  then  shaved 
by  passing  them  over  a  large  knife  and  placed  in  an  upright  po- 
sition ;  they  are  next  buttered,  and  put  in  a  large  tub  of  sawdust 
by  men  half  naked,  who  tread  on  them  for  some  time,  the  heat  of 
their  bodies  rendering  the  leather  soft  and  supple ;  they  are  then 
beaten  out  and  finished." 

But  modern  methods  have  introduced  machinery  for  almost 
every  process  except  the  brushing  in  of  the  final  lustre,  and  the 
feathering  of  sable  stripes,  and  the  cleaning  by  sawdust  tramping, 
which  must  still  be  done  with  naked  feet  to  soften  the  pelt  with 
animal  warmth. 

To  give  you  the  faintest  idea  of  what  dressing  means  —  to  quote 
the  Canadian   Fur  Report  again  —  the  pelts  must  be  "beamed^ 


a. 

S 
o 


Courtesy  Gotllieb  Compar^y. 

Fisher  Skins  —  a  Fur  that  Defies  Imitation,  Sells  for  $  lOO  to  $3CX)  for 
Neck  and  Muff  Pieces. 


DYEING  AND  DRESSING  OF  FURS  8i 

scraped,  tramped,  soaked,  fleshed,  tanned,  dried,  drummed,  greased, 
kicked,  drummed  with  sawdust,  dyed,  shaved,  pared  and  foot- 
tubbed  before  they  are  ready  for  the  manufacturer." 

The  machinery  used  is  : 

Washing  tanks^  which  are  made  of  wire  mesh  and  revolve  in 
a  tank  of  water ; 

Drying  vats,  which  revolve  very  rapidly,  to  throw  moisture  out 
of  the  skins ; 

Cleaning  drums,  which,  with  an  exhaust  air  arrangement, 
remove  the  sawdust  or  corn  starch  from  the  skins ; 

Polishing  drums,  which  revolve  the  skins  with  sawdust  to  polish 
the  fur  and  hair ; 

Wooden  tanks,  for  dyeing; 

Revolving  stone  cylinder,  for  beaming; 

Kicking  machine,  for  pounding  the  skins ; 

Sewing  machine,  built  especially  for  joining  fur ; 

Clipping  machine,  for  shearing  the  under  fur  even. 

Canadian  fur  dressers  treat  fox  and  mink  as  follows : 

Fox  Mink 

Pounded  Pounded 

Wet  with  sawdust  Soaked  to  soften  head 

Fleshed  Fleshed 

Salt  water  put  on  skin  Flesh  pickled 

Dried  Dried 

Broken  in  foot-tub  Drummed  with  sawdust 

Buttered  or  greased  Greased  and  pounded 

Tubbed  Stretched 

Cleaned  with  sawdust  in  drum  Drummed  (sawdust)* 

Dried  Stretched 

Polished  in  drum  with  sawdust  Drummed  (sawdust) 

Stretched  and  beaten 

Dyed 

"At  'the  fur  dressers'  the  skins  are  first  dampened  on  the  flesh 
side  with  salt  water  and  left  all  night  to  soften.     The  following 


82  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

morning  they  are  placed  in  a  tramping  machine,  where  they  are 
tramped  for  eight  or  ten  hours.  The  machine  works  about  2000 
pelts  at  a  time. 

"The  pelts  are  next  covered  with  a  mixture  of  sawdust  and  salt 
water,  and  remain  so  overnight.  The  following  morning,  they 
are  cut  open  down  the  front  and  are  then  fleshed,  one  man  being 
able  to  flesh  200  to  300  a  day.  The  skins  are  next  stretched  and  ; 
hung  up  to  dry.  When  thoroughly  dry,  they  are  again  moistened  *• 
with  salt  water  on  the  leather  side,  remaining  so  overnight.  They 
are  next  brushed  on  the  flesh  side  with  animal  fat  —  butter  or  fish 
oil  and  tallow  —  and  laid  in  pairs,  with  fur  side  out.  After  remain- 
ing overnight  they  are  placed  in  tramping  machines  and  worked 
for  six  or  eight  hours,  or  until  thoroughly  soft  and  pliable.  They 
are  then  stretched  in  every  direction. 

"The  next  process  Is  cleaning.  The  skins,  to  the  number  of 
300  or  400,  are  placed  with  sawdust  in  revolving  drums  exposed  to 
steam  heat.  They  are  revolved  for  about  three  hours,  when  the 
sawdust  will  have  completely  absorbed  the  grease.  The  skins  are 
next  incased  in  a  beating  drum,  where  they  are  revolved  for  two  or 
three  hours.  On  removal,  they  are  beaten  with  rattans,  and  the  fur 
is  cleaned  with  a  comb.  The  heavier  pelts  are  fleshed  down  thin, 
thus  completing  the  operation  of  dressing  for  the  majority  of 
skins." 

Come  now  to  the  treatment  of  special  furs.  The  Germans 
excel  in  the  dressing  of  lamb,  squirrels,  cats'  skins,  beaver;  the 
EngUsh  in  the  dressing  of  chinchilla,  marten,  sable,  skunk,  fox, 
seals  ;  and  now  with  the  War  disrupting  not  only  the  trade  in  skins 
but  the  workers  available,  it  Is  a  question  If  the  American  dressers 
have  not  come  up  in  excellence  on  a  par  with  both  countries.  Cer- 
tainly, the  skin  dressed  and  dyed  in  America  to-day  cannot  be 
detected  from  the  skin  dressed  and  dyed  in  Europe. 

As  the  process  of  seal  dyeing  is  now  in  the  Courts,  little  can  be 
said  about  It  except  that  the  excellence  of  the  English  system  is 
ascribed  to  a  certain  proportion  of  copper  dust,  antimony,  camphor, 


DYEING  AND  DRESSING  OF   FURS  83 

verdigris  and  gall  nuts.  The  seal  dye  is  both  brushed  in  by  hand 
and  the  fur  dipped.  From  12  to  14  final  coats  are  brushed  in  by 
hand  to  give  the  fine  lustre.  Perhaps  this  may  explain  why  real 
seal  comes  so  high  in  price ;  for  few  of  the  expert  workers  charge 
less  than  ^100  a  week.  The  excellence  of  Germany's  treatment 
of  muskrat  and  lamb  is  ascribed  to  the  quality  of  the  running  water 
and  the  softness  of  the  climate;  but  I  doubt  this  time-honored 
explanation ;  for  no  process  on  earth  to-day  excels  the  American 
system  used  in  Brooklyn  and  Newark,  where  both  the  climate  and 
running  water  differ  from  Germany's. 

Reference  has  been  made  to  the  grading  of  furs  before  sale  at 
the  great  auctions.  Graders  and  sorters  are  also  among  the  most 
highly  paid  fur  workers.  The  grading  and  sorting  differ  for  each 
fur.  Beaver  is  graded  —  Large,  Small,  Medium,  Cubs.  Skunk  is 
graded  —  Skunk  and  Civet  Cat,  then  as  to  primeness  of  fur.  House 
cats  are  graded  —  Black,  Spotted,  Small ;  and  for  people  who  pity 
pussy,  it  is  well  to  remember  the  feathered  songsters  of  our  gardens, 
who  rejoice  that  the  high  price  of  furs  has  practically  exterminated 
the  stray,  ownerless  cat.  Fishers  are  graded  —  Dark,  Medium, 
Brownish.  Red  foxes  are  graded  first  as  to  whence  they  come, 
Labrador,  Alaska,  Nova  Scotia ;  then  as  to  Large,  Medium,  Small. 
Mink  also  are  first  graded  as  to  their  habitat,  second  as  to  Quality, 
Color,  Large,  Medium,  Small.  Otter  are  graded  as  to  habitat,  then 
as  to  Quality  down  to  four  sizes,  then  as  to  Color,  then  as  Large, 
Small,  Medium. 

It  is  interesting  to  compare  three  great  authorities  on  American 
furs  as  to  the  numbers  of  each  kind  of  fur  demanded  by  the  annual 
market ;  and  yet  with  a  whim  of  fashion,  the  figures  correct  for 
to-day  may  be  erroneous  for  to-morrow.  Petersen,  a  great  authority 
on  American  furs,  and  Hornaday,  the  great  authority  on  natural 
life,  give  the  following  totals.  To  these  are  added  the  totals  of 
certain  furs  yearly  sold  in  London,  and  the  total  of  furs  yearly 
sold  in  the  entire  world,  as  given  by  Brass.  Brass  is  a  great  world 
authority  on  world  production. 


84 


THE  FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 


Badger  • 
Beaver  . 
Ermine    . 

Fitch  .  . 
Silver  Fox 
Red  Fox  . 
Marten    . 

Stone  .     . 

Mink  .     . 

Muskrat  . 
Otter  .     . 

Coon  .  . 
Sable  .  . 
Skunk      . 

Squirrel    . 

Rabbit     . 

Fisher 


Pexeksen 


185,000 

81,000 

1,000,000 

350,000 

6,000 

1,000,000 

150,000 

250,000 

1,000,000 

5,000,000 
90,000 

500,000 

175,000 

1,200,000 


HORNADAY 


80,000 


1,165,000 


120,000 

(U.  S.) 
60,000 

(U.  S.) 
?,ooo,ooo 
30,000 

(U.  S.) 


1,500,000 
(U.  S.) 


10,000 


Solo  in  London 


34,000  (1906) 
99,000  (1906) 
40,000 

77,000 

2,510 

158,961 

21,000 

12,939 

299,254 

(Amer.) 

5,000,000 

21,000 

(Can.) 

310,712 

124,000 

1,068,408 

(Can.) 

2,000,000 

(Rus.) 

80,000,000 

(Australian  and  Belgian) 

S>900 

(Can.) 


Sold  in  World 
(E.  Brass) 


160,000 

81,000 

1,110,000 

(Siberia) 

300,000 

4,300 
1,200,000 
210,000 
(Rus.,  Jap.) 

380,000 

(Am.,  Sib.) 

640,000 

(Am.,  Asiatic) 

8,000,000 

124,000 

(All  Coun.) 

600,000 

235,000 

1,500,000 

15,500,000 

(Sib.) 
71,500,000 

10,000 


A  moment's  reflection  explains  why  these  great  authorities  differ 
so  widely  in  certain  furs,  why  America  will  have  a  large  sale  of 
otter  and  London  a  small  one.  When  prices  fall  owing  to  any 
cause  whatsoever,  a  whim  of  fashion  or  war,  it  is  the  custom  in 
London  to  withdraw  the  fur  from  market  and  hold  it  in  storage 
till  the  price  goes  back  to  at  least  what  was  paid  the  trapper.  In 
America,  all  furs  consigned  are  sold,  though  they  may  be  bidden 
in  by  their  own  sellers.  Petersen  computes  what  the  trade  is  selling, 
Brass  what  the  fur  world  is  producing ;  and  there  again  storage  may 
hold  huge  quantities  off  the  market  for  intervals ;  but  these  totals 
give  some  idea  to  what  proportions  the  world  fur  trade  is  now 
reaching. 


DYEING  AND  DRESSING  OF  FURS  85 

To  come  back  to  dyeing  — Indians  used  water  made  from  ashes 
for  cleansing  furs  and  the  brains  of  the  buffalo  to  grain  the  pelts. 

In  London,  before  the  War,  were  14  great  houses  exclusively 
devoted  to  dyeing,  where  men  grew  up  from  apprentices  to  experts 
and  were  regarded  as  a  sort  of  secret  order  of  their  own.  The 
same  was  true  of  at  least  two  centres  in  Germany ;  but  as  the  War 
stopped  the  supply  of  raw  material,  both  the  dye  secrets  and  many 
of  the  dye  operatives  came  to  America,  where  fur  dye  works  have 
swollen  to  such  enormous  proportions  that  any  figures  given  to-day 
would  be  wrong  to-morrow. 

The  real  secret  of  the  success  In  seal  dyeing  will  never  be  given 
to  the  world.  It  is  held  by  only  two  firms,  the  London  firm,  who 
have  made  the  success  of  seal  dyeing  for  150  years  —  ever  since 
Cook's  returned  voyageurs  round  the  globe  brought  back  seals  and 
sea  otters  to  the  fur  market  —  and  two  members  of  that  firm, 
who  came  to  St.  Louis  with  the  process,  when  the  American  Govern- 
ment began  seUing  the  U.  S.  seals  at  St.  Louis  fur  auctions.  It 
is  over  the  use  of  this  secret  London  process  that  the  lawsuit  is 
now  in  the  U.  S.  Courts ;  and  it  would  be  superfluous  to  register 
any  opinion  on  that  lawsuit  till  the  Supreme  Court  gives  its  de- 
cision. Certainly,  American  fur  traders  are  not  going  to  ship 
American  Government  owned  furs  to  Europe  to  be  dressed  and 
then  pay  for  their  reshipment  back  to  the  United  States  in  dressed 
and  manufactured  form.  Canada  has  always  felt  aggrieved  over 
the  award  on  pelagic  sealing ;  but  while  lovers  of  wild  life  may  not 
approve  of  the  legality  of  the  decision,  if  pelagic  sealing  had  not 
been  stopped,  seal  life  would  have  been  exterminated  as  sea  otter 
life  has  almost  been.  Pelagic  sealing  was  a  cruelty  unspeakable ; 
for  when  heavy  fogs  lay  over  the  Seal  Islands,  poachers  of  every 
nationality  —  Japanese,  American,  Canadian,  South  American  — 
scooted  in  and  massacred  seals  on  the  Islands,  killing  old  and  young, 
mothers  and  pups  and  unborn  pups.  Slaying  was  done  so  hurriedly 
and  cruelly,  that  many  seals  were  not  dead  when  they  were  flayed  ; 
and  the  only  way  to  stop  the  poaching  was  to  stop  pelagic  sealing. 


86  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

The  fact  that  seal  life  is  coming  back  to  normal  production  justifies 
the  law,  however  foolish  it  is  in  many  respects ;  and  for  a  full  fair 
discussion  of  the  imperfections  of  the  law  there  is  no  better 
authority  than  Dr.  Barton  Warren  Evermann  of  the  California 
Academy  of  Sciences,  himself  an  American,  who  is  at  least  in 
sympathy  with  the  American  contentions. 

Seal  fur  in  its  native  form  is  a  dark  grizzled  red  gray,  with  the 
under  fur  tinged  deep  red.  The  over  hairs,  or  whisker  hairs,  are 
very  long,  which  protects  the  pelage.  The  hairs  are  a  dirty,  greasy 
mass.  The  pelt  must  first  be  blubbered  and  washed  in  warm 
water.  It  is  then  stretched  on  hooks  and  dried  in  blasts  of  hot  air. 
It  must  be  soaked  to  loosen  the  long  hairs.  The  top  hairs  are 
removed  by  a  blunt  knife.  The  skins  must  be  warm  for  this  process. 
When  the  rough  hairs  have  been  plucked,  the  pelage  Is  left  a  dark 
drab.  The  pelts  are  then  tubbed  and  shaved.  This  process  so 
far  requires  three  months.  The  pelts  are  then  pasted  together 
back  to  back.  Over  holes  in  the  fur  —  eye  holes,  etc.  —  brown 
paper  is  fastened  to  prevent  the  dye  staining  the  pelt.  A  ground 
coat  of  dye  is  then  appHed.  This  apphcation  used  to  be  trodden 
in,  appHed  cold.  From  9  to  14  coats  are  then  brushed  into  the  fur, 
before  the  final  beautiful  brown  lustre  is  applied. 

The  seal  is  dipped  to  darken  the  top ;  and  it  Is  for  this  dip 
the  dyers  of  England  were  celebrated.  The  dyeing  process  requires 
from  six  weeks  to  two  months ;   and  the  art  Is  a  trade  secret. 

I  do  not  know  the  order  in  which  the  various  processes  are  ap- 
plied ;  but  the  skins  are  cleaned  In  revolving  drums  filled  with 
sawdust.  They  are  beaten,  trimmed  and  sorted.  All  edgings 
taken  off  are  used  for  trimmings,  capes  and  felting.  Belly  fur 
spoiled  by  wear  and  rubbing  on  the  rocks  is  used  In  the  same  way. 

Hair  and  harp  seals  taken  off"  the  coast  of  Newfoundland  and 
Labrador  were  formerly  used  only  for  oil  and  coarsest  leather. 
Of  late,  they  have  come  on  the  market  as  fur,  the  baby  white  seals 
resembling  a  spotted  leopard  skin,  only  a  light,  almost  bluish  sea 
gray.     They  are  not  in  the  same  class  of  furs  as  Alaska  seal,  or 


DYEING  AND  DRESSING  OF   FURS  87 

even  Hudson  seal,  which  is  muskrat,  but  they  are  superior  to  near 
and  electric  seal,  which  is  rabbit. 

The  great  dyeing  and  dressing  centre  for  squirrel  has  been 
Weissenfels,  Germany,  where  it  was  supposed  the  natural  clays 
and  salts  gave  peculiar  advantage  to  the  20  great  dyeing  firms 
there ;  but  this  supposition  I  again  doubt,  for  American  firms  are 
doing  the  same  dyeing  to-day  and  doing  it  well.  I  rather  suspect 
the  supremacy  of  Germany  in  squirrel  dressing  arose  from  the  fact 
that  of  15,000,000  squirrels  coming  to  world  markets,  more  than 
three-fourths  come  from  Russia ;  and  the  most  of  the  buying  was 
for  European  markets.  It  may  be  guessed,  Germany  will  retain 
her  ascendancy.  One  firm  dyes  as  many  as  half  a  million  squirrel. 
Tails  are  used  for  boas.  Bellies  are  used  for  cheap  linings,  and 
backs  for  expensive  linings  in  imitation  of  otter  for  men's  coat 
collars  and  linings.  The  pretty  matched  coat  linings  for  wraps 
come  from  this  source. 

From  beaver,  the  over  hairs  are  hand  plucked.  Skins  must 
be  soaked  and  a  dull  knife  used  on  the  skin  side.  Poor  beaver  is 
used  dyed  for  sea  otter  and  for  felting.    Perfect  beaver  is  never  dyed. 

Muskrat  dye  is  a  long  process.  It  is,  indeed,  both  an  American 
and  a  French  process  ;  for  the  house  that  developed  muskrat  dyeing 
first  perfected  the  process  in  France.  The  black  muskrat  used 
to  be  used  for  expensive  coat  Hnings  in  imitation  of  otter.  The 
muskrat  pelt  is  stretched  flat  and  cut  square,  by  which  it  can 
always  be  detected.  The  old  process  was  to  clean  the  skins  in  warm 
water,  scrape  off  all  fat  and  flesh,  and  stretch  the  pelt  fur  side  down. 
The  pelt  was  then  immersed  in  a  solution  of  salt,  alum,  water  and 
sulphuric  acid,  thickened  with  wheat  bran  and  flour.  When  dried, 
the  bran  was  shaken  off  and  the  pelt  rolled  and  unrolled  to  soften. 
The  tanning  followed,  a  warm  water  pickle  of  wheat  bran  in 
slight  ferment  with  salt  and  the  skin  immersed  for  a  few  hours. 
Ingredients  of  the  pickles  and  the  time  set  for  each,  I  prefer  not 
to  give,  for  each  dresser  has  his  own  methods,  which  he  does  not 
advertise. 


88  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

Such  hand  methods  were  feasible  for  a  few  hundred  thousand 
skins ;  but  there  are  firms  to-day  handHng  4,000,000  skins  yearly ; 
and  this  demanded  newer  machine  processes  by  which  dyeing 
plates  to  the  number  of  400,000  could  each  treat  10  skins  ;  and  here, 
what  applies  to  muskrat  handled  in  bulk  quantities,  also  applies 
to  rabbit  handled  in  millions  yearly.  It  was  the  handling  of  muskrat 
and  rabbit  in  bulk  quantities  that  put  both  furs  on  the  market  as 
imitation  seals  —  muskrat  as  Hudson  seal,  rabbit  or  coney  as  near 
and  electric  seal ;  and  as  told  in  another  section,  while  muskrat 
seal  will  outwear  Alaska  seal,  rabbit  seal  will  not,  and  ought  never 
to  be  sold  as  "just  as  good"  at  a  lower  price.  Neither  rabbit,  nor 
cat,  the  oily  furs,  will  ever  wear  well  as  the  crisp  furs. 

Modern  dressing  of  these  furs  is  by  machine.  Fleshing  is  by 
machine;  and  if  too  much  flesh  is  taken  off  the  skin,  the  fur  falls 
out.  The  cleaning  is  done  in  vats  with  mahogany  sawdust  fine 
as  flour  and  some  gasoline.  The  finer  furs  are  still  tramped  in  the 
vats  by  naked  feet  to  soften  the  harshness  of  the  pelt;  but  a  re- 
volving drum  kicks  the  fur  soft  and  flexible;  and  the  human  feet 
do  with  bodily  warmth  what  air  and  machinery  cannot  do.  Auto- 
matic blowers  fan  the  sawdust  out.  Shearing  machines  operated 
by  electric  power  even  the  fur  down  to  equal  length ;  and  all  dis- 
card is  used  for  hatting  and  felting.  The  machine  cuts  more  evenly 
than  any  human  hand.  Ground  dye  gets  the  golden  tint  on  the 
skin  by  which  all  dyed  skins  can  be  detected.  Over  40,000  skins 
go  into  these  dye  vats  at  a  time,  which  are  whirled  round  and 
round  with  a  sort  of  windmill  motion.  This  gets  the  groundwork 
dyeing  below  the  pelage.  The  skins  then  go  in  pure  water  and  the 
damp  skin  is  thinned  over  a  rope  or  chain  to  get  the  moisture  out 
with  blasts  of  warm  air  as  dryers.  This  air  is  kept  at  just  exactly 
summer  heat  —  90. 

The  unhairing  machine  is  used  on  the  muskrat,  but  not  the 
rabbit.  An  absolutely  even  stub  must  be  left.  The  stretching 
to  give  flexibility  is  done  over  a  rope  by  hand.  Comes  next  the 
dyeing  work  proper  for  the  pelage.     The  top  dye  is  black.     This 


DYEING  AND  DRESSING  OF  FURS  89 

can  be  put  on  by  machine,  or  brushed  in  by  hand.  The  machine 
can  do  2CXX)  skins,  or  the  work  of  five  men ;  and  the  use  of  the 
machine  has  been  so  furiously  opposed  by  the  unions  that  in  at 
least  one  huge  factory  it  has  had  to  be  given  up.  A  machine  will 
do  10,000  skins  a  day ;  but  hand  work  only  —  two  coats  put  in  by 
brush  as  a  woman  dyes  her  hair  —  gives  the  final  lustre.  The 
pelts  are  then  put  on  racks  to  dry. 

Hand  processes  are  still  used  to  flesh,  pickle,  grease,  soften, 
cleanse,  shear  (with  aid  of  machine),  stretch  and  get  the  stiff  hairs 
out.  The  biggest  houses  handle  easily  by  machinery  4,000,000 
muskrats  a  year  and  6,000,000  rabbits. 

Unprime  rabbits  and  unprime  muskrats  are  not  worth  the 
expense  of  work  and  are  used  for  felting  and  hatting. 

Mole  dyeing  must  all  be  done  by  hand.  The  skin  is  too  fragile 
for   quick   machine   work. 

Broadtails  can  be  done  by  machine,  but  the  final  lustre  of  lamb 
skin  must  be  hand  finished.  In  one  firm,  before  broadtail  dyeing 
was  perfected,  20,000  skins  were  sacrificed  to  experiments  in  the  labo- 
ratory.    In  all  lamb  skins,  the  aim  is  to  leave  the  skin  a  bluish  black. 

Mole  must  be  washed  in  soapy  water  and  wrung  dry  and  the 
dye  always  laid  on  so  the  edges  match,  but  no  two  pieces  of  the  mole- 
skin run  the  grain  of  the  fur  in  the  same  direction.  Best  grade 
moles  need  not  be  dyed  except  at  the  edges. 

It  is  only  ten  years  since  muskrat  and  rabbit  dyeing  were  so 
perfected  as  to  put  these  pelts  on  the  market  as  desirable  fur. 
Ten  years  more  may  witness  processes  so  improved  as  to  put  Chinese 
goat  on  the  market  cheap  as  wool  scarfs,  or  old-fashioned  mitts. 
Meantime,  enough  has  been  told  of  dye  processes  to  show  why  furs 
are  furs  and  command  commensurate  prices  in  proportion  to  fur 
substitutes.  All  in  all,  from  the  record  of  ten  years'  improvement 
in  dyeing,  I  am  not  afraid  of  such  extermination  of  fur  bearers  as  to 
put  furs  beyond  the  reach  of  all  buyers  except  the  rich ;  but  I  am 
impressed  by  the  fact  that  any  furs  requiring  from  1600  to  5600  hand 
processes  should  receive  the  care  and  preservation  of  fine  diamonds. 


CHAPTER  VIII 
FARMING  MUSKRAT  FOR  FUR 

In  considering  the  fur-bearing  world,  it  is  impossible  to  group 
the  animal  life  according  to  the  classifications  of  zoology.  For 
instance,  fisher,  mink,  kolinsky,  otter  —  are  scientifically  relatives ; 
but  as  to  furs,  fisher  ranks  up  with  the  silver  and  cross  fox;  and 
otter  ranks  up  with  sea  otter  and  beaver. 

Muskrat  is  a  relative  of  the  mouse  and  the  rat.  Yet  you  never 
associate  his  pelt  even  with  the  mole.  You  rank  him  up  with  seal  and 
mink.  Badger  and  lynx  are  the  soft  fluffy  furs.  Yet  the  animals 
are  aliens.  Beaver  and  otter  would  seem  to  be  brothers  in  aquatic 
life.  Yet  in  the  fur  world,  you  think  of  beaver  and  nutrias  as 
partners,  the  nutria  a  very  junior  partner,  indeed.  Squirrel,  mole 
and  chinchilla  have  not  the  remotest  relation  to  one  another  scien- 
tifically. Yet  their  furs  are  a  trio  of  the  rare  fragile  peltries.  I 
have  never  seen  'any  system  by  which  the  zoological  scientific 
classifications  of  the  fur-bearing  animals  can  be  made  to  resemble 
the  classifications  of  the  animals  as  fur  bearers. 

Take  the  muskrat  1 

A  few  years  ago,  he  wasn't  exactly  the  outcast  of  the  fur  world. 
He  was  considered  the  sport  of  boys  more  than  men.  Yet  I  venture 
to  say  in  a  single  year  the  muskrat  to-day  is  bringing  more  money 
into  the  fur  trade  than  the  Alaska  seal  ever  did  in  ten  years.  Con- 
sider the  figures  !  At  the  present  time,  from  8  to  lo  million  muskrats 
are  being  yearly  taken  in  Canada  and  the  United  States.  When 
I  was  up  on  Cumberland  Lake  a  few  years  ago,  lo  to  15^  was  con- 
sidered a  fair  price  for  muskrats  and  25^  high.     Cumberland  Lake 

90 


FARMING  MUSKRAT  FOR  FUR  91 

is  the  terminus  of  a  300  mile  stretch  of  Saskatchewan  River,  which 
is  pure  swamp  and  muskeg  —  the  ideal  home  of  the  muskrat  because 
of  the  exhaustless  supply  of  a  bulbous  reed,  which  grows  higher 
than  field  corn  for  a  width  of  40  to  50  miles,  where  the  ground  is  so 
damp  the  intrusion  of  foxes  and  wolves  is  impossible  except  in 
winter,  when  the  muskrat  is  hidden  in  his  burrow  deep  under  the 
ice  or  in  the  dome  of  a  house,  through  which  the  hard  frost  prevents 
fox  or  wolf  burrowing.  It  is  the  ideal  sheltered  muskrat  preserve  of 
the  North  forever,  just  as  Delaware  Bay  is  the  ideal  preserve  of  the 
muskrat  on  the  Atlantic  Coast.  Ten  years  later,  the  muskrat  was 
selling  up  at  Cumberland  Lake  and  at  Norway  House  for  90^, 
which  prevailed  to  the  opening  of  the  War  in  1914.  Then  came  the 
perfections  of  American  dyeing  processes  producing  muskrats 
that  could  not  be  detected  from  Alaska  seal.  Last  year,  the  musk- 
rat  sold  at  Cumberland  Lake  and  at  Norway  House  for  $$  a  pelt. 
That  figure  would  be  too  high  an  average  for  the  10  million  muskrat 
pelts  yearly  taken  in  America.  Well,  put  the  figure  at  an  average 
of  $2.  You  have  a  total  of  $20,000,000.  It  is  only  a  few  years  ago 
that  America's  entire  fur  trade  did  not  equal  $20,000,000.  Even 
when  100,000  seal  pelts  were  coming  out  of  Alaska  in  a  year,  valued 
undyed  at  $10  as  I  found  them  in  1875,  or  $30  as  I  found  them  in 
1911-12-13,  you  have  the  entire  output  of  Alaska  seal  in  its  best 
days  not  equal  to  a  sixth  the  value  of  muskrat  to-day.  Muskrats 
sold  at  from  10  to  50^  in  1907;  at  80  to  85^  in  191 1 ;  at  $1.25  in 
1912;   and  jumped  to  $5  and  $y  for  perfect  pelts  in  1920. 

Of  all  the  fur-bearing  animals,  muskrats  can  be  the  most  easily 
farmed ;  but  they  have  not  been  farmed  up  to  date  because  a  little 
care  of  their  natural  runways  produces  all  the  trade  can  consume. 
Stock  a  marsh  where  the  muskrat's  natural  food  is  plentiful ;  and 
nature  will  do  the  rest.  A  few  years  ago,  boys  hunted  muskrat 
marshes  without  let  or  hindrance.  To-day  "ratting  rights"  are 
rented  half  to  the  owner,  half  to  the  trapper;  and  many  a  marsh 
owner  along  the  Great  Lakes,  or  Chesapeake  Bay,  has  been  sur- 
prised to  find  his  swamp  ground  yielding  him  higher  revenues  than 


92  THE  FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

his  farm  land.  We  may  not  call  this  muskrat  farming,  but  it  is ; 
and  everything  is  marketed  except  the  tail ;  fur,  flesh,  musk  bags 
bring  their  price.  The  fur  goes  for  seal,  the  flesh  for  marsh  hare, 
the  musk  bags  for  chemicals.  In  spring,  the  flesh  is  too  musky  for 
food ;  and  as  the  muskrats'  value  is  more  appreciated,  there  will 
doubtless  and  should  be  clapped  on  certain  closed  seasons  when  the 
fur  is  not  at  its  best. 

One  acre  of  marsh  lands  will  furnish  50  rats  a  year  without 
diminishing  the  future  catch ;  and  if  these  rodents  are  taken  only 
when  the  fur  is  at  its  best  and  yield  only  $2  each  —  the  salt  marshes 
are  beating  the  best  potato  lands  of  Maine,  or  spring  wheat  lands 
of  the  North-west. 

Furs  may  be  furs ;  but  there  are  times  when  they  begin  to  look 
Uke  diamonds. 

Not  more  than  50  rat  pairs  should  tenant  an  acre,  as  they  fight 
viciously  and  devour  their  own  wounded,  which  should  appease 
the  tender  conscience  of  sentimentalists  wearing  muskrat  coats. 
The  water  must  be  deep  enough  not  to  freeze  to  bottom.  Mud 
thrown  up  to  dredge  deeper  will  be  used  by  the  rats  to  build ;  and 
the  diet  required  consists  of  bulbous  roots,  wild  rice,  wild  lilies, 
cat-tails,  carrots,  beets,  turnips,  apples,  pumpkins,  in  fact  any  rat 
food.  Two  litters  of  rats  come  the  first  season,  three  every  season 
afterwards;  and  the  pups  run  4  to  12  at  a  time.  Taking  these 
figures,  you  can  do  a  problem  in  muskrats  that  will  make  you  dizzy. 
You  will  find  at  the  end  of  the  third  year  very  close  to  1000  for  a 
beginning  of  one  pair ;  this  is  averaging  the  babies  at  8  with  ample 
food.  Try  it,  putting  each  season  in  a  separate  column,  and 
adding  to  your  total  the  old  couples.  In  the  South,  the  litters  seem 
to  run  4  to  6.  In  the  North,  nature  evidently  provides  more  pro- 
llfically  to  counteract  the  cold,  and  Utters  run  8  to  20.  Babies  come 
21  days  after  mating.  The  young  are  bUnd,  naked  and  much  more 
helpless  than  kittens,  but  as  far  as  I  have  been  able  to  observe, 
unless  the  mothers  are  excited,  they  are  tender  and  protective 
with  their  young  as  a  cat,  or  wild  duck.     At  least  I  have  seen  a 


FARMING  MUSKRAT  FOR  FUR  93 

curious  old  mother  muskrat,  following  us  not  a  paddle  length  from 
the  canoe  up  in  the  Cumberland  Lake  region,  go  on  with  much 
the  same  antics  to  divert  us  from  her  burrow  as  a  mother  duck 
will  when  she  "plays"  broken  wing  till  her  hobbling  babies  can 
scuttle  and  dive. 

The  burrows  are  either  along  the  banks  of  streams  slightly- 
above  water  level  but  entered  under  water,  or  in  built-up  nests  in 
shallow  water,  the  living  quarters  above  the  water  line,  the  entrance 
below.  Again  and  again,  as  we  canoed  through  the  muskrat 
lagoons  of  the  Eastern  Saskatchewan,  a  little  whiskered  head  about 
the  size  of  a  large  kitten  would  come  up  alongside  our  canoe  with 
beady  curious  eye  and  a  skinny  tail,  with  the  wiggle  of  a  fish  and  the 
directing  force  of  a  rudder.  I  never  could  guess  whether  they 
came  so  close  because  they  did  not  know  the  fear  of  human,  or  from 
sheer  curiosity. 

In  raw  state,  the  muskrat  fur  resembles  raw  beaver,  but  the 
muskrat  is  hardly  a  fourth  the  size  of  a  beaver,  and  is  always  squarish 
shaped  where  the  beaver  is  long.  Northern  skins  are  lightest  in 
color,  but  thickest  in  fur.  The  darkest  skins  come  from  New 
Jersey,  Delaware,  Maryland,  but  it  has  been  suggested  this  is 
because  the  Northern  skins  are  taken  in  summer,  when  they  are  not 
prime,  and  the  Southern  skins  in  winter,  when  at  their  best.  If 
this  be  so,  there  is  a  job  for  the  game  warden  of  the  North ;  for  this 
probably  also  explains  why  the  long  hairs  of  muskrat  shed.  Musk- 
rat  fur  is  both  durable  and  cheap.  Until  the  perfections  in  dyes, 
it  was  used  for  hatting  and  for  linings.  When  beavered  hats  went 
out  the  call  for  muskrat  fell  off  and  the  pelts  fell  to  lOjif.  Then  came 
the  dyes  making  it  into  an  imitation  seal ;  and  values  jumped  up 
to  $S  and  $7.  Will  they  stay  at  ^5  and  $7  ?  Quien  sabe  ?  If  you 
could  answer  that,  you  could  make  a  fortune  on  a  shoestring; 
but  the  most  of  traders  who  have  attempted  a  fortune  in  muskrats 
on  a  shoestring  in  the  last  year  have  accumulated  a  good  sized 
bankruptcy ;  for  they  were  men  who  did  not  know  skins,  and  paid 
as  high  for  poor  as  good ;  and  the  trade  refused  to  take  such  skins 


94  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

off  their  hands.  "Why  should  I  pay  $5  for  a  skin,  which  I  can't 
sell  at  90ff  as  fur  ? "  an  old  buyer  asked  me.  "  If  these  skins  had  been 
taken  in  winter,  they  would  have  been  all  right ;  but  they  weren't ; 
and  we  can  use  them  only  for  discard  and  cheap  imitations." 

In  the  last  half  of  the  seventeen  hundreds,  muskrat  sold  yearly 
in  London  less  than  75,000  skins.  In  the  first  half  of  the  eighteen 
hundreds,  the  average  went  over  400,000.  In  the  last  half  of  the 
eighteen  hundreds,  the  average  jumped  two  millions  and  a  half 
yearly.  London  sales  to-day  average  7,000,000  a  year;  and 
America's  total  catch  —  as  told  before  —  10,000,000.  When  musk- 
rat  skins  went  to  ^i  trappers  gasped.  When  they  went  to  $5  and 
$7,  traders  were  dumb ;  and  yet  the  fine  skins  were  bought  at  that 
price  by  the  trade ;  and  the  trade  knew  what  it  was  doing.  The 
formal  processes  of  dressing  muskrat  have  already  been  given. 
The  Canadian  Conservation  Report  recommends  the  following 
process  for  home  dressing : 

"The  skin  should  always  be  thoroughly  cleaned  in  warm  water 
and  all  fat  and  superfluous  flesh  removed.  It  should  then  be 
immersed  in  a  solution  made  of  the  following  ingredients  :  Five 
gallons  of  cold  soft  water,  5  quarts  wheat  bran,  i  gill  of  salt,  and 
I  ounce  of  sulphuric  acid.  Allow  the  skin  to  soak  in  the  liquid 
for  four  or  five  hours.  If  the  hides  have  been  previously  salted, 
the  salt  should  be  excluded  from  the  mixed  solution.  The  skins 
are  now  ready  for  the  tanning  liquor ;  which  is  made  in  the  following 
way :  Into  5  gallons  of  warm  soft  water  stir  i  peck  of  wheat  bran 
and  allow  the  mixture  to  stand  in  a  warm  room  until  fermentation 
takes  place.  Then  add  3  pints  of  salt  and  stir  until  it  is  thoroughly 
dissolved.  A  pint  of  sulphuric  acid  should  then  be  poured  in 
gradually,  after  which  the  liquor  is  ready.  Immerse  the  skins  and 
let  them  soak  for  three  or  four  hours.  The  process  of  fleshing 
follows.  This  consists  of  laying  the  skin,  fur  side  down,  over  a 
smooth  beam  and  working  over  the  flesh  side  with  a  blunt  fleshing 
tool.  An  old  chopping  knife  or  a  tin  candlestick  forms  an  excellent 
substitute  for  the  ordinary  fleshing  knife,  and  the  process  of  rub- 


FARMING  MUSKRAT  FOR  FUR  95 

bing  should  be  continued  until  the  skin  becomes  dry,  when  it  will 
be  found  to  be  soft  and  pliable." 

Some  facts  on  farm  returns  :  Near  the  Toledo  Hunt  Club, 
5CXX)  acres  of  marsh  were  left  undisturbed  for  two  years.  In  1904, 
they  were  trapped  for  the  benefit  of  the  Club ;  5000  were  taken 
in  January  and  sold  at  25^  each.  The  meat  sold  to  canners  at  $1 
a  dozen.  Returns  to-day  at  present  prices,  each  reader  can  figure 
for  himself. 

Muskrat  trapping  in  Maryland  is  confined  to  January  i  to 
March  15.  Trappers  have  cleared  on  very  small  leaseholds  from 
^500  to  $900.  Seven  years  ago,  one  marsh  was  bought  for  $2700. 
It  is  yearly  yielding  30  to  50%  interest  on  a  50-50  lease.  Another 
investor  bought  40  acres  for  $150.  It  has  yielded  from  $60  to 
$100  a  year.  These  figures  were  carefully  investigated  and  com- 
pared by  D.  E.  Lantz  of  the  Department  of  Agriculture  in  1910. 
What  the  returns  are  in  the  same  areas  to-day,  it  would  be  hard 
to  give;  for  the  trapper,  himself,  always  answers,  "Poor,  very 
poor." 

The  full-grown  muskrat  is  from  8  to  10  inches  long,  chubby 
and  round,  with  a  6-  to  lo-inch  slimy  tail.  He  has  in  spring  a  pun- 
gent odor.  His  skin  should  be  stretched  inside  out  and  for  trade 
must  be  cut  almost  square.  In  the  old  days,  the  boy's  sport  was  to 
go  punting  in  the  marshes  and  spear  the  muskrat  by  night.  To-day, 
the  nests  are  raided  and  the  little  rodents  clubbed  and  shot.  With 
values  going  up,  the  wastefulness  of  this  method  will  have  to  be 
changed  to  protect  the  young  and  the  litters ;  for  don't  forget  that 
once  three  nations  growled  at  one  another  in  threats  of  war  over 
the  Alaska  seal ;  and  the  catch  of  the  Httle  muskrat  is  to-day  many 
times  more  valuable  to  the  fur  trade  than  the  best  catch  of  seal 
ever  was. 

Owning  and  renting  muskrat  marshes  can  hardly  be  called  fur 
farming ;  and  yet  if  the  muskrat  marshes  are  protected  not  only 
by  a  closed  season,  when  the  fur  is  not  prime,  but  by  a  state  war- 
den, who  will  do  for  them  what  Alaska  game  wardens  are  doing 


96  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

for  the  blue  fox  and  the  seal,  muskrat  farming  will  easily  produce 
aggregates  that  will  make  the  silver  fox  totals  look  small.  Muskrat 
will  be  to  the  fur  world  what  the  locent  store  is  to  the  high-priced 
exclusive  shop  —  the  fur  of  big  turnover  and  enormous  profits 
in  small  amounts,  rather  than  a  small  turnover  and  moderate 
profits  on  a  few  big  amounts. 


Courtesy  Gottlieb  Company. 

Red  Fox  Dyed  for  Silver  Fox  —  Badger  from  Which  the  Silver  Hairs 

Are  Glued  in. 


Courtesy  Canadian  Conservation  Report. 

Fur  Farming  in  Prince  Edward  Island. 


CHAPTER  IX 

THE  RARE  FURS  OF  THE  WEASEL  FAMILY 

Sable,  Mink,  Marten,  Kolinsky  and  Fisher  or  Pekan 

The  despised  weasel  family  is  the  one  branch  of  zoology,  in 
which  scientific  classifications  and  fur  classifications  agree.  The 
weasels  are  the  bearers  of  rarest  furs  and  for  their  size,  the  most 
expensive  furs  in  the  world ;  and  all  have  more  or  less  similar  char- 
acteristics as  to  habits  and  furs. 

Mink,  Weasel  and  Marten,  also  Russian  Sable  and  Japanese 
Kolinsky  —  all  have  long  slender  bodies,  very  short  legs,  flattened 
heads  and  lightning-quick  furtive  motion.  To  any  one  who  finds 
a  difficulty  in  retaining  in  memory  the  differences  between  the  mink 
and  the  marten,  apart  from  size  and  quality  of  fur,  it  helps  to  re- 
member that  the  mink's  motions  are  distinctly  serpentine;  the 
marten's  are  catty.  The  mink  advances  with  a  long  pulling  wriggle 
of  a  stealthy  body,  head  uplifted  to  strike  Hke  a  snake  and  shaped 
not  unlike  a  snake.  The  marten  is  equally  stealthy  but  leaps  like 
a  cat ;  and  if  you  examine  the  shapes  of  the  heads,  you  will  see  the 
marten  head  is  more  like  a  cat's  or  a  fox's  than  a  snake's.  Otter, 
which  also  belongs  to  this  family,  but  whose  fur  will  be  considered 
separately,  and  fisher  or  pekan,  are  five  times  the  size  of  the  little 
fur  bearers  and  their  heads  are  not  unlike  the  seal's.  Marten  has 
a  bushy  tail  that  is  priceless,  so  fine  it  is  often  sold  separate  from  the 
fur.  Fisher  has  a  bushy  beautiful  tail  like  a  fox ;  but  it  is  never 
sold  separate  from  the  fur;  but  the  mink  and  otter  have  nothing 
to  boast  of  in  their  caudal  appendage. 

97 


98  THE   FUR  TRADE   OF  AMERICA 

Russian  sables  only  five  to  eight  inches  long  sell  all  the  way 
up  to  ^700  which  is  —  inch  for  inch  —  many  times  the  value  of 
a  silver  fox.  Hudson  sable,  which  is  nothing  but  American  marten 
and  ought  never  to  be  called  sable,  sold  in  the  1920  sales  from  $201 
in  Montreal  to  ^460  in  St.  Louis,  and  from  these  prices  averages 
for  different  grades  ran  at  ^18,  ^32.50,  $50,  $91.  Fisher,  which  is 
much  larger  than  marten  or  sable,  brought  $125  in  St.  Louis,  $236 
in  New  York,  $148  to  $345  in  Montreal,  while  mink  prices  in  the 
same  sales  rated  from  ^19  to  ^75  and  I  think  in  one  rare  lot  ran  to 
$go.  (Incidentally,  I  may  add  that  when  camping  some  few  years 
ago  on  the  head  waters  of  Bow  River  in  the  Rockies,  I  could  have 
bought  from  the  Indians  the  best  mink  that  ever  were  "minked" 
at  90^  a  skin  —  which  illustrates  how  much  greater  a  gamble  the 
fur  trade  is  for  tenderfeet  than  the  wildest  markets  of  Wall  Street. 
It  makes  me  physically  sick  to  recall  that  early  in  the  1900's  when 
in  Labrador,  I  could  have  bought  the  finest  otter  for  $10,  which  now 
sells  at  ^100  plus  a  pelt.  Considering  these  prices  and  the  advance 
in  muskrat  from  12^5  to  $7,  it  isn't  hard  to  explain  why  fur  traders 
become  rich  or  go  stone-broke  quicker  than  in  almost  any  other 
industry  except  the  finding  of  gold  nuggets.) 

"If,"  says  the  Canadian  Conservation  Report  of  the  weasel  fur 
bearers,  "this  family  could  be  domesticated  there  is  no  doubt  that 
a  market  for  more  than  ^10,000,000  worth  of  raw  fur  annually 
could  be  found."  This  for  Canada  only.  The  absorptive  power 
of  the  American  market  for  these  rare  furs  could  not  be  overdone 
and  would  reach  far  beyond  $10,000,000. 

All  the  weasel  family  are  not  water  lovers.  The  marten  and 
sable  prefer  rocks  and  trees ;  and  the  marten's  fur  is  always  sleeker 
when  he  has  had  access  to  an  abundant  supply  of  raspberries,  blue- 
berries, wild  cranberries  and  haws ;  but  all  the  weasel  except  otter 
are  blood-suckers  and  blood-drunkards. 

Hornaday  gives  the  annual  crop  of  mink  in  America  at  60,000, 
of  pine  marten  at  120,000,  of  fishers  at  about  10,000.  Brass  esti- 
mates the  world  supply  of  mink  as  600,000  from  America ;   20,000 


THE  RARE   FURS  OF  THE  WEASEL  FAMILY    99 

from  Europe ;  20,000  from  Asia.  The  Canadian  Conservation 
Report  gives  the  Asiatic  supply  of  sables  at  75,000  annually;  of 
American  marten  at  120,000.  As  a  matter  of  financial  record, 
362,675  mink  were  exported  from  Canada  in  1890.  In  1918,' 66,297 
mink  sold  in  New  York  and  110,000  in  St.  Louis.  In  1920  spring 
sales,  160,000  mink  sold  at  St.  Louis  and  7800  Russian  sable  and 
22,500  marten ;  21,941  mink  sold  in  Montreal ;  3400  marten  ;  109 
Russian  sable;  275  stone  marten  in  New  York,  almost  14,000 
marten. 

I  give  those  widely  varying  totals  to  illustrate  the  utter  impos- 
sibility of  keeping  any  census  of  rare  furs  under  the  present  system. 
A  high  price  such  as  ruled  in  1920  for  all  the  weasel  family  (except 
otter)  brings  out  furs  stored  and  waiting  for  a  higher  price  for  per- 
haps five  years.  A  low  price,  or  change  in  fashion,  may  relegate 
back  to  cold  storage  rooms  minks  and  martens  sorted  and  ready 
for  sale ;  but  however  you  regard  these  figures,  they  don't  look  like 
an  exterminated  weasel  family. 

Take  the  mink  first;  he  Is  small,  with  a  yellowish  brown  or 
dark  brown  fur.  He  prefers  the  banks  of  streams  but  can  live 
the  hfe  of  a  landlubber,  too.  Birds,  fish,  mice,  eggs  are  his  favorite 
diet;  but  he  kills  for  the  sheer  deviltry  of  killing;  and  Hornaday 
gives  the  depredations  of  one  mink  that  killed  six  wild  geese  in  one 
night  and  of  another  that  slaughtered  ten  gulls.  The  murderer 
could  not  have  sucked  the  blood  of  all  these  sleepers  without  burst- 
ing. One  beautiful  morning,  I  found  on  my  lawn  the  little  body 
of  a  beautiful  red-breasted  grosbeak.  There  was  not  a  ruffle  to 
the  feathers.  The  little  fellow  had  perished  in  his  sleep  and  fallen 
to  the  ground.  Then  I  looked  closer.  Right  on  the  red  of  the  breast 
was  a  puncture  no  larger  than  the  lead  of  a  lead  pencil.  He  had 
been  sucked  to  death  as  he  slept.  Another  morning,  I  found  a 
fine  Plymouth  Rock  pullet  with  the  same  murderous  knitting  needle 
stab.  Weasel  family  had  been  up  to  their  midnight  deviltries. 
My  sympathies  don't  run  out  to  the  mink,  when  he  is  transformed 
into  fur. 


loo  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

The  mink  is  from  lo  to  15  Inches  long.  He  is  solitary.  He 
is  nocturnal.  His  hand  is  against  all  men,  Hke  Cain's,  or  rather 
against  all  creatures  smaller,  or  more  helpless  than  himself;  and  I 
never  look  in  his  murderous  beady  eyes  without  believing  a  bit 
in  the  transmigration  of  souls ;  for  ultimately,  he  falls  a  victim  to 
the  stealthy  ferocity  by  which  he  lives;  and  he  looks  to  me  like 
an  evil  spirit  put  in  a  corporal  form,  in  which  he  must  pursue  his 
glut  for  blood  to  the  blood-thirsty,  but  never-quenched,  end.  He 
mates  in  March  and  the  young  are  brought  forth  six  weeks  later 
blind.  The  blindness  lasts  for  five  weeks  and  if  the  mother  die 
and  the  little  mink  be  placed  to  suckle  with  a  foster  mother,  they 
will  tear  the  milk  ducts  of  a  cat,  and  spit  venom  at  a  baby  bottle, 
or  ink  dropper  extemporized  into  a  feeder.  At  eight  weeks,  they  are 
weaned  and  go  out  on  the  quest  of  their  own  blood-thirsty  trail. 
A  male  may  have  as  many  as  five  wives  in  his  harem ;  and  the 
kittens  number  4  to  9. 

The  best  mink  pelts  to-day  come  from  Labrador,  the  North- 
eastern States,  the  Maritime  Provinces,  Hudson  Bay,  Alaska  and 
the  Rocky  Mountains. 

Best  mink  is  brown,  rather  than  yellow,  and  the  pelage  is  thicker 
in  colder  countries  and  is  one  of  the  best  wearing  furs  in  the  world. 
In  all  the  weasel  family,  the  deep  over  hairs  are  the  chief  beauty 
and  give  a  lustre  and  gloss  to  the  fur,  which  no  dye  can  impart. 

To  the  mink's  body  measurement  of  8  to  12  inches  should  be 
added  the  tail  of  6  to  8  inches.  His  tail  is  pretty  but  not  the  bushy 
flag  of  honor  that  the  sable  and  the  fisher  can  boast. 

I  have  spoken  of  mink  selling  in  the  Rockies  at  90  cents.  In 
1879,  it  sold  in  St.  Louis  at  40  cents. 

In  fur  trade  classifications,  there  are  10  varieties  of  mink  in 
America ;  but  these  classifications  are  chiefly  as  to  habitat,  which 
determines  the  color  and  depth  of  the  fur. 

The  European,  or  marsh  mink,  is  not  valued  as  highly  as  the 
American  mink.  Perfect  mink  fur  is  so  dense,  you  can  bury  your 
hand  in  it,  so  soft  if  you  shut  your  eyes  you  might  mistake  it  for 


THE  RARE   FURS  OF  THE  WEASEL  FAMILY     loi 

down,  and  the  over  hairs  are  so  shiny  they  defy  dye.  It  is  the 
darker  strip  down  the  back  gives  the  mink  garment  its  striped  effect. 
The  animal  is  not  a  striped  coat  fellow  like  the  raccoon. 

Can  mink  be  farmed  ?  It  is  said  they  can.  There  are  hundreds 
of  mink  ranches  in  the  United  States  and  three-score  in  Canada 
alone ;  and  the  mink  are  undoubtedly  kept  in  perfect  health  in 
captivity  in  parks  and  zoological  gardens ;  but  the  fact  remains 
up  to  the  present,  the  commercial  returns  have  not  been  such  that 
they  could  be  given  to  the  public,  or  that  they  bulged  the  fur  market, 
or  that  they  bloated  up  a  local  bank  account  so  that  secret  profits 
leaked  out  as  in  the  case  of  the  silver  fox  ranches. 

Mink  returns  will  probably  be  one  of  the  steps  forward  In  fur  farm- 
ing in  the  next  ten  years.  Up  to  the  present,  mink  farmers  can 
make  more  money  selling  live  stock  than  selling  pelts;  but  with 
prices  soaring  as  they  have  in  1920,  live  stock  will  have  to  turn 
itself  into  pelts,  or  the  mink  farming  will  not  go  on.  It  seems  ab- 
surd that  a  mink  kitten  the  size  of  your  hand  should  sell  at  a  higher 
price  than  a  two-year-old  Holstein  heifer;  and  that  is  one  of  the 
things  the  fur  trade  will  have  to  justify  before  mink  farming  goes 
on  to  success. 

From  mink  farmers,  who  are  at  work  to-day,  these  facts  have 
been  gleaned  :  Minks  must  be  given  an  extensive  range. 

They  must  be  near  a  creek. 

Each  family  must  be  kept  in  a  segregated  pen,  or  they  will  take 
to  the  happy  diversion  of  disembowelling  one  another. 

The  nests  are  about  16  inches  by  16  inches,  6  inches  high,  placed 
in  a  box  and  hidden  in  a  bank  of  earth.  The  males  are  given  caves 
roofed  with  rock.  Flesh  and  fish  are  ample  diet.  At  the  end  of 
two  months,  mothers  and  young  are  put  in  separate  pens.  Six 
men  can  manage  a  mink  ranch  of  2000  females.  I  do  not  know  how 
these  figures  have  been  worked  out;  for  a  mink  ranch  with  2000 
females  should  be  selling  at  least  10,000  mink  a  year  and  clearing 
up  not  far  short  of  $200,000  a  year ;  and  I  do  not  know  of  any  mink- 
ery  for  which  such  claims  are  even  remotely  made,  though  it  is  well 


102  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

to  remember  one  silver  fox  farm  had  cleaned  up  $225,000  before 
nearest  neighbors  knew  It  was  not  a  failure. 

Male  mink  are  very  vicious  and  sometimes  canine  teeth  have 
to  be  filed  before  they  are  admitted  to  their  mates.  The  warning 
is  Issued  by  all  mink  ranchers  to  wear  mitts,  and  to  take  the  young 
away  from  the  mothers  at  the  8th  or  loth  week,  or  one  may  have  the 
blood-thirst  awakened  In  him  some  night  and  slake  it  in  the  jugular 
vein  of  his  mother  or  his  brother.  Oh,  they  are  a  nice  domestic 
little  bunch,  the  minks  ;  and  there  is  nothing  so  becoming  in  a  mink 
to  me  as  Its  apotheosis  Into  a  girl's  collar.  It  is  once  the  scalper's 
scalp  can  be  worn  with  beauty,  satisfaction  and  a  sense  of  righteous- 
ness. 

In  summer,  vary  the  diet  with  milk,  bread  and  mush. 

I  do  not  know  the  why  of  it,  but  feeders  all  warn  not  to  give 
salt  In  any  form  to  mink. 

Prices  of  breeders  run  from  $30  to  $200  a  pair. 

Next  comes  the  koHnsky,  which  in  the  last  ten  years  has  become 
a  favorite  fur  in  America. 

Kolinsky  Is  not  a  false  mink.  It  is  simply  a  Siberian  and  Japan- 
ese mink,  which  has  to  be  dyed  because  Its  native  color  Is  something 
between  an  orange  and  the  shade  of  the  yolk  of  an  egg.  It  Is  known 
as  "the  red  sable,"  "the  Turkish  sable"  and  "the  golden  sable." 
Its  body  is  about  18  Inches  long  and  Its  tail  is  used  for  paint  brushes. 
About  80,000  a  year  are  trapped  In  Siberia.  The  Japanese  kolinsky 
is  a  lighter  yellow  than  the  Siberian ;  and  the  tail  of  the  kolinsky 
is  much  fuller  than  the  tail  of  the  American  mink.  The  belly  is 
light,  almost  white. 

Only  a  few  years  ago,  kolinsky  skins  sold  at  32  cents.  This 
spring,  they  sold  at  $5  to  $7  In  New  York. 

Dyed  by  hand,  a  good  kolinsky  can  hardly  be  detected  from 
Russian  sable.  It  Is  a  favorite  lining  for  the  Turkish  trade,  which 
explains  why  it  Is  called  "fire  marten,"  or  "Tartar  sable."  It  is 
almost  the  size  of  the  cat,  14  to  18  Inches  long,  with  a  tail  4  to  8 
inches ;  and  the  female  is  always  larger  than  the  male. 


THE  RARE   FURS  OF  THE  WEASEL  FAMILY    103 

Kolinsky  is  nocturnal  in  habits.  It  climbs  trees  like  the  mar- 
ten ;  robs  nests,  eats  squirrels,  birds,  eggs,  mice  and  berries.  It 
Is  a  great  blood-drinker  and  hunts  exactly  like  the  cat,  by  furtive, 
stealthy  approach,  then  a  savage  leap,  with  one  strike  of  the  sharp 
teeth  into  the  brain  or  neck  of  the  victim;  and  the  poor,  stupid, 
defenceless  hare  falls  its  victim  just  as  it  falls  the  victim  to  mink. 
I  have  often  wondered  if  the  souls  of  cowards  are  sent  back  for  a 
period  of  probation  to  the  bodies  of  rabbits  and  hares  to  be  haunted 
by  their  own  fears. 

The  first  rage  for  kolinsky  came  to  the  United  States  when 
the  War  shut  off  European  markets ;  but  the  fur  combines  utility 
with  beauty  to  such  a  marked  degree  that  I  do  not  believe  it  will 
ever  lose  favor  with  the  American  market  —  especially  as  long  as 
it  sells  at  a  sixth  the  price  of  minks  and  martens.  It  is  a  type  of 
mink  that  seems  to  me  all  ready  designed  for  coats ;  for  it  has  to 
be  dyed  and  cannot  be  sold  undyed.  Whereas,  good  marten  and 
good  mink  should  never  be  dyed ;  but  if  you  match  the  stripes  in 
coats  and  mantles,  there  must  always  be  more  or  less  dyeing ;  and 
to  put  $30,000  in  one  garment  comes  very  near  being  a  fur,  if  not 
a  game,  hog.  Every  skin  in  a  $30,000  coat  would  have  made  a 
neck  piece  to  vie  with  diamonds. 

But  it  is  when  you  are  considering  the  sables  and  the  martens 
that  you  are  considering  the  royal  family  amid  weasel  furs.  Sham 
aristocrats  here  have  created  as  much  confusion  as  sham  aristocrats 
in  the  human  world.  Sable  is  sable  and  marten  is  marten  and  mink 
is  mink ;  but  to  call  one  by  the  name  of  the  other  is  only  to  confuse 
the  pubHc  into  a  timidity  of  buying. 

American  marten  is  marten.  It  is  never  sable,  though  we  call 
it  American  sable,  or  Hudson  Bay  sable. 

The  only  true  sable  is  the  Russian  sable. 

The  wild  marten  is  just  as  blood-thirsty  as  the  mink,  but  he 
can  be  tamed  into  a  pet,  which  the  mink  never  can.  The  marten 
is  larger  than  the  mink,  and  resembles  a  cat  or  fox  more  than  a 
snake.     He  mates  in  January  or  February,  and  his  young  are  born 


104  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

in  3  months.  They  do  not  emerge  to  the  world  for  8  weeks  and 
are  full  grown  at  6  months.  Hornaday  describes  the  marten  as 
an  imitation  young  red  fox  about  as  large  as  a  heavy  cat.  Its  length 
is  24  inches,  its  tail  6  to  7  inches  and  its  body  dark  brownish  yellow 
or  fawn.  The  legs  are  darker  than  the  body.  It  loves  timbered 
haunts  and  rocky  burrows.  It  is  not  a  chicken  thief  like  the  mink 
but  it  is  a  still  hunter  of  birds,  eggs,  reptiles,  mice,  rats,  with  a  great 
taste  for  berries,  which  improve  the  sheen  of  the  fur.  It  is  called 
the  "pine  marten"  because  it  loves  the  forests  of  evergreens. 

The  pine  marten  is  also  known  as  the  baum  marten  in  Europe. 

The  stone  marten  has  a  white  throat  and  a  tail  so  fine  it  is  kept 
to  adorn  mantles  and  capes.  The  stone  marten  is  found  all  over 
Europe.  Its  fur  is  almost  a  purple  brown  with  the  belly  side  white, 
the  throat  pure  white ;  and  its  fur  has  no  yellowish  cast  whatever. 
The  Canadian  marten  is  a  rich  brown,  almost  black.  Its  under 
fur  below  the  pelage  is  almost  drab.  The  long  hairs  are  darker 
than  the  thick  even  pelage.  The  throat  is  white.  The  tail  tip 
may  be  white  but  is  not  always  so.  The  best  martens  in  Canada 
come  from  Labrador  and  the  Rockies.  Fur  traders  say  they  can 
tell  the  Canadian  marten  by  the  shade  of  the  long  over  hairs,  the 
white  spots  on  the  breast,  the  grayish  ears,  and  the  fact  the  fur  is 
coarser  and  harsher  than  the  Russian.  At  a  wild  guess,  the  yearly 
catch  is  about  90,000  in  Canada,  though  these  may  all  come  on  the 
market  at  once,  or  be  held  off  for  a  rise  in  price,  or  change  in  style. 
The  legs  of  Hudson  Bay  marten  are  tinged  with  white,  of  the  Japan- 
ese martens  with  black. 

Why  should  marten  fur  be  so  highly  prized  ?  It  is  not  durable 
as  otter,  or  rare  as  otter.  Solely  because  of  its  sheer  beauty  and 
wearing  qualities.  The  over  hairs  are  so  long  and  so  uniform, 
they  are  deeper  than  the  deepest  fox  over  hairs.  Their  glisten 
imparts  almost  the  sheen  of  a  beautiful  veil.  Then  the  dark  brown 
under  pelage  is  soft  as  chinchilla  and  fine  as  down.  Beneath  that 
again  is  a  lighter  under  fur  fine  as  down.  Well-marked  skins  need 
no  dye.     Only  when  matched  in  a  cloak,  must  the  stripes  down  the 


THE   RARE   FURS  OF  THE  WEASEL  FAMILY    105 

back  be  blended  by  hand  feathering.  And  note  again,  the  marten 
is  not  a  striped  animal.  The  stripe  in  the  coat  is  nothing  but  the 
beautiful  dimple  of  darker,  richer  fur  down  the  backbone. 

And  of  the  marten  family,  the  Russian  sable  is  the  king.  He 
is  the  smallest  of  the  martens,  too,  small  almost  as  a  squirrel,  9 
inches  long  and  less  with  a  tail  5  inches  or  less,  very  dark  brown 
with  a  silvery  sheen  to  his  under  hair  and  no  spot  of  white  on  throat 
or  legs.  His  habitat  is  Siberia.  As  high  as  £33  was  cheap  for  a 
skin  in  London  and  to-day  the  price  is  near  £100.  Before  the  War, 
the  normal  catch  used  to  be  25,000  annually,  but  just  before  the 
downfall  of  the  Royal  Government  of  Russia,  the  annual  catch  of 
Russian  sable  had  been  so  falling  off  that  the  Government  was  plan- 
ning for  a  closed  season  for  some  years.  Steel  traps  were  forbidden. 
Unprime  sable  furs  were  subject  to  confiscation ;  and  all  sable 
exports  had  to  be  tabulated  in  customs  returns,  where  they  could 
be  inspected.  It  used  to  be  said  that  a  trapper  in  Siberia  who  had 
a  successful  run  of  sable  for  a  single  year  could  afford  to  retire 
a  rich  nabob.  There  is  on  record  the  case  of  one  man  "coming  out" 
with  3000,  whether  caught  by  himself,  traded  from  the  Chuchees, 
or  stolen  —  is  not  known ;  but  on  sale  of  his  yearly  catch,  he  re- 
tired.    He  had  found  his  gold  nugget  in  one  season  of  three  months. 

The  head  of  the  Russian  sable  is  almost  a  round  ball.  Includ- 
ing his  tail,  18  inches  is  long  for  his  measurement.  His  long  over 
hairs  are  almost  black.  His  nose  is  black,  his  ears  gray.  His 
chest  and  sides  are  deep  chestnut  brown.  Under  his  throat,  he 
wears  a  fur  cravat  of  golden  yellow.  Second-grade  Russian  sable 
have  white  hairs  among  the  long  over  blacks.  A  peculiar  beauty 
of  the  long  over  hairs  is  they  turn  equally  in  every  direction  and  so 
never  acquire  that  "catty  licked"  look  common  to  kolinsky. 
They  look  Uke  the  hairs  on  a  creature  that  is  aHve.  The  tips  of 
the  over  hairs  are  darkest,  and  the  under  fur  is  so  thick  it  can  hardly 
be  blown  open.  The  finest  Russian  sable  like  the  finest  types  of 
all  rare  furs  comes  from  the  wooded  areas  of  pine,  poplar,  willow. 
Russian  sable  from  cedar  forests  is  a  lighter  color ;  but  that  may  be 


io6  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

because  cedar  grows  best  In  a  slightly  swampy  soil ;  and  though 
the  sable  is  a  weasel,  like  the  mink,  he  does  not  frequent  streams. 
He  prefers  the  rocks  and  the  trees. 

Sable  are  found  far  south  as  China  and  far  west  as  the  Ural 
Mountains,  and  thrive  best  in  Siberia  and  Kamchatka.  Kamchatka 
used  to  pay  its  taxes  to  the  imperial  treasury  in  sable  skins.  Over 
80  skins  a  winter  was  not  an  abnormal  catch  for  a  good  trapper. 

The  Russian  sable  nests  in  rocky  burrows  and  hollow  trees 
with  moss  and  leaves  to  line  his  house.  The  young  are  born  In 
spring  in  litters  of  3  to  5,  so  it  ought  not  to  be  impossible  to  multiply 
the  sable  if  he  could  be  domesticated.  His  diet  is  rabbit,  birds, 
eggs,  berries  and  —  like  all  the  weasels  —  fresh  blood.  He  Is  a 
night  hunter  and  such  a  heavy  day  sleeper  that  he  can  be  taken 
out  of  his  nest  without  alarming  him.  He  hunts  with  almost  the 
same  antics  as  the  domestic  cat. 

Of  late  years,  guns  are  never  used  on  the  sable,  only  snares  and 
box  traps  that  cannot  injure  the  fur.  The  trapping  season  is  from 
October  to  November. 

In  the  fur  trade  are  16  classifications  of  Russian  sable,  accord- 
ing to  the  district  from  which  they  come.  For  instance,  Kam- 
chatka sable  have  silver  hairs,  cedar  sable,  yellow  hairs,  and  so  on. 

Before  the  War,  one  Russian  fur  farmer  was  experimenting  with 
sable ;   but  nothing  has  come  out  to  the  trade  of  his  results. 

Pekan,  or  fisher,  and  otter,  are  the  largest  of  the  weasels  coming 
on  the  market  as  furs.  I  am  aware  wolverine,  skunk  and  badger 
are  scientifically  classified  in  the  same  family;  but  as  fur,  they  are 
not  to  be  considered  In  the  same  breath  as  the  minks,  the  martens 
and  the  sables. 

Otter  will  be  dealt  with  In  connection  with  sea  otter ;  but  among 
the  high-priced  weasel  furs,  fisher  or  pekan  ranks  as  a  sort  of  Black 
Douglas,  not  as  costly  and  rare  as  the  tiny  sable,  but  a  magnificent 
black-coated  fellow,  the  largest  of  the  fur  weasels  and  such  a  verita- 
ble snob,  he  associates  his  fur  with  no  other  fur,  but  is  done  up  in 
unique  one-piece  goods,  incapable  of  Imitation  and  unless  brown- 


THE  RARE   FURS  OF  THE  WEASEL  FAMILY    107 

tinged  in  his  pelt,  unneedful  of  dyes.  He  is  handsome,  bold,  a  tree 
climber,  a  hunter,  a  fighter  and  a  robber  baron  of  all  other  animals' 
stores  and  baits.  He  eats  fish,  flesh,  herring,  mice,  rabbits,  squirrels, 
birds,  snakes,  eggs,  frogs,  toads,  moles.  He  can  live  in  a  marsh, 
or  he  can  live  next  door  to  the  marmot  —  whom  he  will  eat  —  in 
a  rocky  burrow,  or  he  will  climb  up  and  take  his  day  sleep  in  a  tree. 
He  ranges  from  New  York  to  the  Pacific  Coast  far  north  as  Alaska. 
Yet  it  is  seldom  more  than  10,000  of  this  long  black  snaky  deep 
furred  fellow  are  taken  in  America  in  a  year.  His  length  is  given  as 
24  inches  Ip  body  with  a  14-  to  18-inch  tail,  which  he  curls  round 
his  toes  for  warmth. 

Fishers,  or  pekans,  are  always  favorites  of  the  fur  trader  and  will 
be  to  the  end  of  time.  They  are  the  biggest  and  most  durable  — 
except  otter  —  of  all  the  weasel  furs.  They  are  known  as  "  black 
marten,"  "pennant  marten,"  "cat  marten";  and  they  are  true 
martens  in  all  but  color,  which  is  a  jet  black,  or  black  brown. 

I  find  less  known  of  the  fisher's  habits  than  any  other  fur  bearer ; 
and  I  can  recall  having  seen  only  one  in  wild  life  —  and  it  was  a 
vanishing  black  streak  making  from  a  pond  for  the  woods. 

Can  the  weasel  family  be  fur  farmed  ? 

After  the  record  in  silver  fox,  I  should  not  like  to  answer  that. 
The  next  ten  years  will  answer  the  question. 

Mr.  Ned  Dearborn,  Assistant  Biologist  of  the  Bureau  in  Wash- 
ington, gives  the  following  facts  as  to  the  weasel  fur  bearers : 

"The  Marten's  size  is  about  twice  that  of  minks.  The  fur 
which  is  very  soft,  somewhat  resembling  that  of  foxes,  is  about  i^ 
inches  long  when  prime.  The  color  varies,  individually,  from 
pale  gray  to  orange  brown  and  dark  brown. 

"The  color  of  fishers  varies  from  grayish  brown  to  nearly  black. 
The  fur  when  fully  developed  measures  about  2^  inches  in  length. 

"The  cost  of  installing  and  stocking  a  mink  or  skunk  ranch 
is  comparatively  small,  depending  somewhat  on  location.  Material 
for  a  single  pen  for  either  of  these  animals  can  be  bought  for  about 
$2.     Minks  (live),  usually  sell  at  from  $8  to  $12  each  and  skunks 


io8  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

at  from  $2  to  $8,  according  to  quality.  Minks  and  de-scented 
skunks  can  be  kept  in  an  ordinary  back  yard  provided  it  is  partially 
shaded. 

"If  one  wishes  to  dress  his  own  furs  the  following  recipe  for  a 
tanning  liquor  may  be  used,  but  time  and  patience  are  required 
to  produce  soft,  pliable  skins,  as  the  process  is  largely  one  of  manip- 
ulation :  To  each  gallon  of  water  add  one  quart  of  salt  and  a  half 
ounce  of  sulphuric  acid.  This  mixture  should  not  be  kept  in  a 
metal  container.  Thin  skins  are  tanned  by  this  liquor  in  one  day ; 
heavy  skins  must  remain  in  it  longer,  and  will  not  be  harmed  if 
left  in  it  indefinitely.  When  removed  they  are  washed  several  times 
in  soapy  water,  wrung  as  dry  as  possible  and  then  rubbed  on  the 
flesh  side  with  a  cake  of  hard  soap.  They  are  then  folded  in  the 
middle,  hung  lengthwise  over  a  line,  hair  side  out  and  left  to  dry. 
When  both  surfaces  are  barely  dry  and  the  Interior  Is  still  moist 
they  are  laid  over  a  smooth  rounded  board  and  scraped  on  the  flesh 
side  with  the  edge  of  a  worn  flat  file  or  a  similar  blunt-edged  tool. 
In  this  way  an  inner  layer  is  removed  and  the  skins  become  pearly 
white  In  color.  They  are  then  stretched,  rubbed,  and  twisted  until 
quite  dry.  If  parts  of  a  skin  are  still  hard  and  stiff,  the  soaping, 
drying  and  stretching  process  is  repeated  until  the  entire  skin  is 
soft.  Fresh  butter  or  other  animal  fat  worked  into  skins  while 
warm  and  then  worked  out  again  in  dry  hardwood  sawdust,  or 
extracted  by  a  hasty  bath  in  gasoline,  Increases  their  softness." 


CHAPTER  X 
SEA  OTTER  AND  LAND  OTTER 

Zoologically  they  may  not  be  related  but  as  to  furs  and  habits 
they  are,  the  Sea  Otter,  the  king  of  all  fur-bearing  animals  of  the 
sea,  now  all  but  extinct,  and  the  Land  Otter,  whose  fur  stands  at 
the  head  of  the  list  for  beauty  and  durability. 

The  Land  Otter  is  as  fond  of  water  as  the  Sea  Otter ;  but  its 
habitat  is  the  land,  not  the  water.  Its  favorite  food  is  fish.  Its 
webbed  feet  carry  it  over  swamp  ground.  Its  pointed  flat  tail 
acts  as  rudder  when  swimming,  and  its  little  short  legs  act  as  motors 
when  running  over  land.  Differing  from  its  lesser  brothers  of 
the  weasel  family,  the  Land  Otter  is  neither  a  thief,  nor  a  robber, 
neither  a  blood-sucker  nor  a  wanton  assassin.  He  is  a  night  hunter, 
too,  but  no  enemy  of  man  and  under  care  becomes  a  good-natured 
pet.  In  length  the  Land  Otter  is  3  to  3^  feet  with  a  tail  about  16 
inches  long ;  and  his  ranging  ground  used  to  be  from  Florida  to 
Alaska ;  but  settlement  has  drained  his  old  time  solitary  ponds ; 
and  the  Otter  to-day  is  rarely  trapped  in  the  South,  the  best  pelts 
now  coming  from  Labrador,  Athabasca,  the  Rocky  Mountains 
and  Alaska.  Ten  years  ago,  the  catch  of  Land  Otter  for  America 
used  to  run  at  30,000  a  year.  To-day,  I  should  be  surprised  if  the 
catch  ever  exceeded  10,000.  In  only  1904,  a  Land  Otter  pelt  sold 
for  $2Q ;  and  the  price  was  considered  high.  In  the  Montreal  sale 
of  1920,  Labrador  Otter  sold  for  $100  plus.  Labrador  and  Kam- 
chatka Otter  rank  as  the  best  in  the  fur  trade;  and  the  two  best 
markets  for  Otter  skins  were  in  Russia  and  Canada.  Owing  to 
the  demoraUzation  of  Russia  by  the  War,  that  market  has  been  cut 

109 


no  THE  FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

off.  Yet  Otter  prices  have  moved  up  to  $ioo  plus.  In  the  South, 
the  Otter  has  already  been  exterminated.  In  the  North,  I  doubt 
if  he  will  ever  be ;  for  he  is  a  lover  of  solitary  places  and  has  instinct, 
cunning  and  dexterity  to  match  against  the  man  hunter. 

It  has  always  been  a  matter  of  amazement  to  me  that  the  Amer- 
ican markets  have  not  had  greater  demand  for  Otter.  The  reasons 
for  this  are  many.  The  fur  is  a  heavier  pelage  than  the  American 
climate  requires ;  and  while  it  is  exquisitely  beautiful,  it  is  not 
a  showy  fur.  The  best  Otter  on  the  American  market  is  seen  in 
men's  overcoat  collars.  Much  of  the  Otter  fur  done  up  as  women's 
coats  is  the  plucked  Otter  siding  or  rubbed  belly  fur,  which  has  been 
discarded  and  dyed  to  imitate  beaver  or  seal.  The  true  Otter  is 
undyed,  a  deep  glostering,  shiny  brown,  almost  black  in  the  best 
pelts,  with  rough  over  hairs,  which  are  often  but  ought  never  to  be 
cut  down,  and  a  fur  proper  thicker  than  any  other  fur  on  the  market. 
Indeed,  the  fur  below  the  long  hairs  is  almost  impenetrable.  Be- 
neath this  is  another  downy  fur,  which  is  dyed  to  imitate  seal  and 
beaver. 

Undyed  Otter  has  long  over  hairs  a  shade  darker  than  the  next 
layer  of  thick  fur.  That  is  —  if  the  under  fur  is  brown,  the  long 
hairs  will  be  a  darker  brown.  If  the  under  fur  is  almost  black  the 
over  hair  will  be  black  with  a  brown  tinge ;  and  below  these  layers 
is  another  fur,  which  is  used  for  imitations.  To  me,  there  is  no 
equal  to  it  in  the  world  for  combined  utility  and  beauty  and  dura- 
bility in  all  weather,  wet  or  dry,  sunny  or  cloudy,  raw  or  penetrating 
frost.  In  weight,  it  is  heavy  to  carry.  It  is  also  expensive,  too 
expensive  for  a  climate  where  you  wear  a  fur  coat  for  only  two 
months  of  the  year ;  but  in  Canada  and  Russia,  Otter  can  be  worn 
as  a  coat  by  day  for  five  months  of  the  year  and  as  an  evening  wrap 
for  a  lifetime.  It  does  not  cost  as  much  as  mink,  marten,  sable, 
chinchilla,  mole ;  but  it  ranks  up  next  to  these  expensive  furs. 
I  may  say  in  all  the  fourteen  or  fifteen  years  I  have  lived  in  the 
United  States,  I  have  never  seen  an  Otter  coat  which  had  not  some- 
thing which  a  Canadian  or  Russian  would  reject.     Either  it  was 


SEA  OTTER  AND  LAND  OTTER  iii 

the  belly  and  side  fur  plucked  and  dyed  to  imitate  beaver  or  seal, 
with  the  real  unplucked  otter  for  collar  and  cuffs ;  or  it  had  been 
silvered  by  chemicals  to  imitate  Russian  sable,  which  must  cer- 
tainly weaken  the  pelt,  made  it  an  imitation  of  a  true  fur  and  brought 
the  price  up  close  to  the  cost  of  marten  or  mink.  Also  those  sil- 
vered pelts  were  of  very  small  animals ;  and  when  the  combination 
of  a  small  pelt  and  chemicals  is  found  though  you  may  be  told  it 
"looks  just  like  marten  with  the  stripe  left  out"  —  look  out  for 
unprlme  fur  doctored.  Prime  Otter  is  dark  as  seal,  deep  as  fox, 
tough  as  buffalo,  and  rich  as  mahogany. 

I  quote  the  Canadian  Conservation  Report : 

"Full-grown  Canadian  otters  are  about  4  feet  in  total  length 
and  weigh  approximately  20  to  30  pounds.  Their  striking  charac- 
teristics are  long,  lithe  bodies,  tapering  into  long,  muscular,  flat- 
tened tails ;  very  short  legs,  fully  webbed  hind  feet ;  short  ears, 
keen  little  eyes  and  a  beautiful  coat  of  dense,  dark  brown  fur. 
They  are  weasel-like  in  their  quickness,  extremely  muscular  and, 
for  their  size,  fearless  and  savage  fighters. 

"Many  kinds  of  otter  occur  in  different  parts  of  the  world,  but 
the  largest  and  most  valuable  for  fur  are  those  of  North  America, 
Lautra  Canadensis,  and  its  several  closely  related  sub-species  or 
geographic  varieties.  Considering  their  wide  range  from  Labrador 
to  Alaska  and  from  near  the  Arctic  coast  to  Florida  and  Arizona, 
they  show  surprisingly  little  variation  in  size  or  in  color  or  quality 
of  fur.  This  is,  of  course,  owing  to  their  aquatic  habits  and  to  the 
nearly  uniform  temperature  of  water  in  winter  over  almost  the  whole 
continent. 

"For  breeding  purposes  otters  with  the  most  valuable  coats 
should  be  selected,  preferably  the  very  dark  individuals  from 
Eastern  Canada,  Labrador,  Newfoundland  or  Maine.  Consider- 
able individual  variation  is  shown  and  the  grade  of  fur  could  doubt- 
less be  steadily  improved  by  selective  breeding.  The  largest  indi- 
viduals are  from  Alaska  and  the  Northwest,  but  the  skins  of  these 
are  less  valuable  than  those  of  the  smaller  and  darker  animals  of 


112  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

the  Northeast.  The  highest  quotations  are  always  for  skins  from 
Canada  and  the  Eastern  United  States. 

"The  prime  requisite  for  success  in  raising  any  fur-bearing 
animals  is  a  thorough  knowledge  of  their  habits,  especially  breed- 
ing and  food  habits.  The  following  notes  are  offered  as  suggestions 
in  conducting  experiments  with  otters  : 

"Otters  are  semi-aquatic,  are  powerful  and  rapid  swimmers, 
able  to  stay  under  water  for  a  considerable  time  in  pursuit  of  prey 
or  in  escaping  from  enemies,  but  they  are  well  adapted  to  dry  land. 
They  make  long  journeys  overland  from  one  stream  to  another  and 
especially  delight  in  travelling  over  soft  snow,  on  which  they  run 
and  sHde  on  their  silky  bellies  with  apparent  enjoyment.  On 
freshly  fallen  snow  or  wet  snow  they  often  prefer  this  method  of 
travelling  and  will  follow  the  banks  of  a  stream  for  miles ;  but  the 
greater  part  of  their  travelling  is  in  the  water  where  most  of  their 
food  is  procured.  The  long  flattened  tail  is  a  powerful  propeller 
and  the  large  webbed  hind  feet  give  additional  paddle  surface  for 
easy  and  rapid  progress  through  the  water.  While  on  dry  land  their 
motions  are  comparatively  slow  and  awkward ;  in  the  water  they 
are  rapid,  lithe  and  seal-like,  almost  as  easy  and  graceful  and  even 
more  rapid  than  those  of  many  fish.  Fish  are  pursued  and  caught 
apparently  in  fair  chase  and  with  great  ease,  though  it  is  perhaps 
not  safe  to  say,  that  all  kinds  are  an  easy  prey.  Otters  seem  to 
be  about  equally  active  night  or  day,  but  most  so  in  the  morning 
and  evening  hours." 

In  191 8,  shipments  of  Land  Otter  from  Alaska  totalled  1647. 
Of  the  1613  sold  in  the  spring  auctions  of  New  York  in  1920  prices 
ran  from  $y  to  $66  —  ^7  being  for  unprime,  which  ought  to  be  a 
crime.  Of  the  4800  sold  in  St.  Louis  in  the  spring  sales,  prices 
ran  about  the  same  as  in  New  York  but  not  so  high  as  in  Montreal, 
because  the  best  Otter  in  the  world  come  direct  to  Montreal  from 
Labrador.  London's  spring  sales  numbered  about  5400  Land  Otter, 
which  it  may  be  guessed  came  from  the  Canadian  market.  The 
I2,cxx)  sold  in  these  spring  sales  would  represent  about  a  third  of 


N 

a; 


Pi  ° 

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SEA  OTTER  AND   LAND   OTTER  113 

the  world's  yearly  catch  in  Otter ;  and  with  prices  off  owing  to  the 
close  of  the  Russian  buying  market,  prices  are  not  likely  to  go  higher, 
which  is  a  good  thing  for  one  of  the  rarest  and  most  beautiful  of 
the  Canadian  and  Russian  furs.  It  seems  almost  a  pity  that  some 
government  fur  farm  for  Land  Otter  cannot  be  set  up  now,  when 
breeding  stock  is  plentiful  enough  to  begin  well,  either  in  Alaska, 
or  Labrador,  or  British  Columbia,  to  do  for  the  Land  Otter  what 
the  U.  S.  Government  has  done  for  the  Alaska  seal,  or  the  Canadian 
Government  for  the  buffalo,  or  the  Prince  Edward  Island  ranchers 
for  the  silver  fox.  Nothing  can  ever  take  the  place  of  Land  Otter 
as  a  fur.  It  could  be  multiplied  now  into  a  great  staple  of  the  rare 
furs  in  the  same  class  as  Persian  lamb  and  Alaska  seal ;  and  now 
is  the  time  to  do  it  and  not  when  it  reaches  the  status  of  the  Sea 
Otter. 

For  trade  purposes.  Land  Otter  is  classified  in  several  varieties, 
chiefly  as  to  habitat.  Darkest  fur  is  from  the  region  of  East  Main 
in  Western  Labrador ;  largest  pelts  from  British  Columbia  ;  thickest 
fur  from  Alaska,  etc.  Ten  such  land  specimens  are  so  classified. 
Then  come  classification  as  to  quality  and  three  sortings  as  to  size. 

When  you  come  to  Sea  Otter,  you  are  dealing  with  one  of  the 
tragedies  of  the  fur  world  —  a  fur  rare  and  beautiful  as  the  finest 
jewel,  durable  as  shoe  leather,  and  plentiful  almost  as  the  sands  of 
the  sea,  reduced  so  close  to  extermination  that  what  sold  in  the 
hundreds  of  thousands  a  century  ago,  2369  in  1891,  yielded  all  told 
in  191 2  only  202  pelts,  in  1920,  only  7  pelts  for  sale  in  St.  Louis  and 
3  in  New  York  and  15  in  London.  Prices  for  Sea  Otter  used  to 
run  from  $500  to  $1000.  Prices  this  year,  when  the  pelts  were  not 
of  first  grade,  two  or  three  having  been  taken  from  bodies  found 
dead  off  the  islands  of  Alaska,  ran  from  $1700  in  St.  Louis  to  $2000 
a  pelt  in  London. 

To-day  a  white  man  may  not  kill  a  Sea  Otter  under  penalty  of 
$500.  Native  Aleuts  only  are  permitted  to  hunt  them;  but  the 
danger  is  that  remedies  have  come  too  late  as  in  the  case  of  the  ex- 
termination of  the  beautiful  wood  pigeon.     Fur  farming  except 


114  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

in  its  native  habitat  of  Alaska  will  not  help ;  for  Sea  Otters  in  cap- 
tivity like  seals  in  captivity  are  subject  to  pneumonia ;  and  its 
wide  range  from  Southern  Polar  Seas  to  Northern  Polar  Seas  renders 
treaty  protection  such  as  saved  the  Alaska  seal  almost  impossible. 
It  looks  to-day  as  if  five  years  would  see  the  last  Sea  Otter  taken 
from  the  wild  Northern  ocean  waves,  where  it  cradled  for  so  many 
centuries.  Two  factors  sealed  the  Sea  Otter's  doom.  When  Russia 
decided  to  sell  Alaska,  which  she  did  many  years  before  the  United 
States  bought  the  Territory  —  in  fact.  Sir  George  Simpson,  Governor 
of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company,  had  considered  such  purchase  away 
back  between  1826  and  1838  —  she  turned  her  Aleut  hunters  loose 
to  hunt  to  the  point  of  leaving  only  an  empty  shell  for  the  next  own- 
ers of  the  country.  Then  came  the  perfection  of  long-range  fire- 
arms ;  and  the  Sea  Otter  herd  quickly  disappeared  before  the  world 
awakened  to  the  loss. 

It  is  one  of  the  great  tragedies  of  the  fur  world  ;  and  the  finding 
of  the  Sea  Otter  and  the  hunting  of  it  are  two  of  the  most  romantic 
pages  in  American  history.  First,  the  Sea  Otter,  Itself,  as  Hornaday 
and  Elliot  say,  is  "a  child  of  the  ocean."  It  is  born  at  sea  in  a  sea- 
weed bed  called  "kelp."  It  is  rocked  on  the  waves.  It  plays  in 
the  sea.  It  sleeps  in  the  sea.  It  floats  or  submerges,  coming  up 
only  at  intervals  to  breathe.  It  was  formerly  found  from  Lower 
California  to  Bering  Sea.  It  is  now  found  only  as  a  rarity,  or 
freak.  Hornaday  gives  the  measurement  as  3 1  to  4  feet  with  tail 
1 1  inches  long ;  but  a  full-grown  Sea  Otter  was  larger  than  a  man  is 
tall.  The  coveted  fur  is  dense  with  over  hair  and  denser  in  pelage. 
It  is  finer  in  texture  than  Land  Otter,  shimmering  and  lustrous  as 
light  on  water,  black  in  color  with  a  tinge  of  purplish  silver  like  the 
light  on  the  sea. 

It  was  always  the  favorite  fur  of  the  Chinese  mandarins  and 
speedily  became  the  fashionable  fur  of  the  Russian  nobihty.  The 
story  is  romantic. 

When  Vitus  Bering's  castaways  Jooked  about  on  the  barren 
islands,  where  they  were  marooned  for  the  winter  of  1741,  they  found 


SEA  OTTER  AND  LAND  OTTER  115 

the  swampyjWeedy  salt  marshes  of  surf  and  rock  alive  with  a  medium- 
sized  animal,  for  which  the  Russians  knew  no  other  name  but  "sea 
beaver."  Mad  with  hunger,  the  desperate  sailors  fell  on  the  kelp 
beds,  clubbing  right  and  left.  The  Sea  Otter  did  not  know  enough 
to  be  afraid  and  fell  easy  victims.  Seizing  the  raw  flesh  for  food, 
the  castaways  used  the  pelts  for  clothing,  blankets,  rugs  in  their 
sand  caves.  Like  "Caesar's  brains,"  Sea  Otter  was  now  used  to 
chink  the  cracks  of  huts  and  keep  out  the  cold.  When  in  spring 
the  sailors  rigged  up  a  crazy  skiff  to  return  to  Asiatic  shores,  they 
carried  with  them  a  thousand  peltries ;  and  to  their  amazement 
they  found  that  Chinese  merchants  would  pay  for  these  skins  what 
in  modern  money  would  be  ^150  to  $200. 

Henceforth,  Sea  Otter  hunting  became  a  gold  stampede ;  and  to 
it  rushed  such  riff-raff  as  always  follow  the  lode-star  of  quick  for- 
tune by  a  gamble.  All  the  capital  needed  was  a  boat  and  food  for 
six-months  hunt;  and  this,  merchants  of  Russia  were  easily  per- 
suaded to  advance  on  shares  to  any  leader  who  would  take  out  a 
company  of  hunters.  Young  Russian  noblemen  saw  a  chance  to 
make  easy  money  as  the  young  French  nobility  had  with  beaver. 
They  did  not  go  out  with  hunters,  themselves,  but  they  obtained 
royal  concessions  or  licenses  on  shares  for  merchants,  who  would 
outfit  companies  of  riff-raif  criminals  and  adventurers  for  the  hunt. 

When  Captain  Cook's  crews  came  to  the  Pacific  thirty  years 
later,  they,  too,  obtained  skins  in  barter  for  beads  and  baubles, 
which  they  afterwards  sold  in  China  for  a  fortune.  Just  as  the  lit- 
tle beaver  led  exploration  up  the  St.  Lawrence  to  the  Pacific  and 
the  Arctic,  so  now  the  Sable  and  the  Sea  Otter  lured  the  adventurers 
of  Europe  eastward  across  Siberia  and  round  the  world  in  explo- 
ration of  the  Pacific  Coast  of  America. 

Of  the  fur,  itself,  the  great  beauty  consisted  in  its  ebony  shimmer, 
interspersed  with  silver.  Six  feet  the  pelt  measured  from  tip  to 
tail.  The  face  was  beaver  shaped.  The  teeth  were  like  a  cat. 
The  feet  were  webbed.  Only  one  pup  was  born  at  a  time,  and 
it  was  "cradled  in  the  deep,  sleeping  on  its  back  in  the  water," 


ii6  THE  FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

or  tossing  up  seaweed  in  play,  or  going  ashore  among  the  rocks  to 
arrange  its  hair  Hke  a  cat.  It  had  to  come  above  water  to  breathe 
and  when  the  weather  was  stormy,  it  had  to  come  ashore  to  sleep. 
Its  favorite  sleeping  bed  was  the  kelp,  where  it  could  bury  its  head 
and  think  itself  hidden. 

Storms  and  gales  drove  it  ashore;  so  storms  and  gales,  day 
or  night,  were  the  seasons  for  hunting.  It  was  the  wildest  page 
in  the  history  of  the  American  fur  trade  and  I  have  told  it  else- 
where in  "Vikings  of  the  Pacific"  and  "Conquest  of  the  Great 
North  West."  Some  5000  pelts  a  year  were  an  easy  catch  for  each 
of  several  of  the  Aleutian  Islands.  Multiply  that  by  ^100  to  ^200 
a  pelt,  and  you  will  see  what  profit  there  was  for  partners,  what 
incentive  there  was  to  bludgeon  the  Aleut  hunter  into  a  slave  with- 
out pay  for  the  Russian,  and  what  motive  there  was  in  turn  for  the 
Aleut  to  turn  and  slit  his  criminal  master's  throat. 

To-day,  Sea  Otter  rookeries  are  more  jealously  guarded  than 
diamonds.  Only  there  are  no  more  Sea  Otter  on  the  rookeries  of 
the  Aleutian  and  Bering  Sea  Islands.  Only  an  occasional  Sea 
Otter  carcass  is  washed  up  dead,  or  an  Indian  comes  in  with  an  odd 
pelt,  which  he  does  not  recognize.  To-day,  the  whole  world  sells, 
perhaps  3,  perhaps  20.  Ten  years  ago,  the  catch  was  200;  and  Sea 
Otter  might  have  been  saved.  To-day,  it  is  almost  too  late.  Unless 
Sea  Otter  rookeries  are  found  in  Southern  Polar  Seas  of  which  the 
world  does  not  know.  Sea  Otter  are  lost  forever  to  the  fur  world 
and  to  natural  history. 

When  malcontents  denounce  the  pelagic  sealing  award,  they 
should  think  of  the  Sea  Otter.  Had  the  Sea  Otter  been  protected 
by  international  treaty  at  the  time  the  Seal  was,  the  Sea  Otter  might 
have  been  saved  and  might  have  come  back. 

What  was  the  catch  of  the  Sea  Otter  in  its  best  days  f  Port- 
lock  and  Dixon's  cargo  sold  for  ^50,000.  In  1785,  5000  sea  otter 
were  sold  in  China  for  $160,000.  Two  hundred  thousand  sea  otter 
were  taken  by  the  Russians  in  50  years.  In  1875,  American  com- 
panies newly  come  on  the  hunting  ground  were  taking  3000  a  year. 


SEA  OTTER  AND  LAND  OTTER  117 

Kadiak  was  credited  with  6000  a  year,  Oonalaska  with  3000,  the 
Commander  Islands  with  about  5000. 

And  so  while  an  optimist  may  deprecate  the  possibiHty  of  high 
prices  exterminating  certain  types  of  fur-bearing  wild  life,  Sea  Otter 
is  an  argument  on  the  other  side  for  fur  farming,  game  preserves, 
closed  seasons  and  international  treaty  to  conserve  any  fur  deplet- 
ing down  to  the  point  of  exhaustion. 


CHAPTER  XI 

BEAVER  AND  NUTRIA 

Beaver  and  nutria  are  no  relation  in  the  animal  kingdom. 
Yet  they  are  brothers  in  the  fur  world.  The  fur  trader  scouts  the 
resemblance  of  the  two  furs ;  yet  the  average  layman  has  to  look 
twice  to  distinguish  them,  especially  if  both  have  seen  a  couple  of 
seasons'  wear  and  are  a  little  faded  and  a  little  matted. 

As  bought  new,  they  are  easily  distinguished.  Beaver  is  a 
deep,  thick,  heavy  fur.  Nutria  is  a  thick  fur  but  is  neither  deep 
nor  heavy.  Beaver  has  a  silvery  gray  lustre.  Nutria  is  a  sepia 
brown  and  has  very  little  lustre.  Both  furs  have  been  plucked  of 
coarse  over  hair.  Both  have  at  first  a  tendency  to  curl  or  crisp ; 
but  beaver  is  always  the  silvery  gray,  nutria  the  sepia  brown. 
Lastly  and  most  important  of  all,  beaver  is  never  dyed.  Therefore 
the  skin  below  the  pelage  and  down  is  white  ;  and  the  down  is  bluish 
gray.  Nutria  is  nearly  always  dyed.  Therefore  the  skin  below  is 
golden,  and  the  down  fur  below  the  pelage  is  sepia. 

Both  furs  have  their  uses ;  beaver  for  cold  weather,  nutria  for 
raw  weather.  Both  furs  mat  in  the  damp  and  lose  lustre.  Beaver 
wears  like  buffalo  hide.  Nutria  except  as  a  trimming  is  not  a  dur- 
able fur ;  and  the  prices  of  these  furs,  whatever  the  whims  of  fash- 
ion, should  never  be  nearer  each  other  than  one  for  the  nutria  and 
three  for  the  beaver. 

In  fur-trade  parlance,  nutria  may  be  described  as  the  poor 
younger  brother  of  the  rich  stronger  beaver. 

The  beaver  is  a  castor;  the  nutria,  a  poor  little  water  rat  of 
South  America,  like  our  muskrat  of  the  North. 

Il8 


BEAVER  AND  NUTRIA  119 

Beaver  were  formerly  plentiful  on  every  continent  of  the  world. 
To-day,  they  are  only  park  specimens  in  Europe ;  and  the  range  of 
the  beaver  has  decreased  so  in  America,  he  is  found  only  round  the 
Great  Lakes  and  Hudson  Bay,  in  Labrador,  in  the  hinterland  of 
Northern  Ontario,  in  Athabasca  and  British  Columbia.  The  yearly 
catch  used  to  be  in  the  hundreds  of  thousands,  when  flotillas 
of  Northern  canoes  came  down  the  Ottawa  in  brigades  and  flooded 
Montreal  and  Quebec  and  all  New  France  in  coin  of  the  realm  — 
Beaver.  To-day,  the  catch  is  given  by  Brass  as  80,000  for  America, 
1000  for  Asia,  and  a  few  park  specimens  for  Europe. 

What  especially  stimulated  beaver  hunting  was  the  fact  that 
the  beaver  pelt  could  be  used  for  fur,  the  waste  fur  rubbed  on  belly 
and  sides  could  be  used  for  felts  and  hats,  the  tail  was  as  great  a 
delicacy  on  the  banquet  board  as  "bear's  paws,"  the  general  flesh 
was  preferred  to  game  birds,  and  the  castoreum  sold  for  the  per- 
fume trade  at  $12  to  $15  a  pound.  Presumably,  the  discard  flesh 
could  be  fed  to  the  dogs  of  the  Northern  dog  trains ;  but  every 
atom  of  beaver  was  minted  into  coin  or  profit. 

In  the  old  days  the  price  of  beaver  ran  from  a  few  shillings  to 
32  shillings  a  pelt;  but  with  100,000  to  500,000  beaver  peltries  a 
year  coming  out  by  way  of  the  St,  Lawrence  and  Hudson  Bay,  and 
with  money  of  three  times  greater  purchasing  value  a  century 
and  two  centuries  ago  than  it  has  to-day  —  that  yearly  crop  of 
beaver  pelts  was  a  veritable  gold  mine  to  the  Hudson's  Bay  Com- 
pany, who  operated  the  fur  realm  of  the  Northern  Sea,  or  to  the 
French  colonial  governors,  who  operated  inland  from  the  St.  Law- 
rence, north  to  Hudson  Bay,  west  to  the  Mississippi  and  Rockies. 
In  1907,  the  yearly  catch  was  placed  at  about  80,000  skins. 
By  191 2,  it  had  decreased  to  about  17,000  skins.  This  decrease 
arose^from  several  facts.  Settlement  had  cut  off  the  beaver's  wide 
range  and  a  closed  season  in  at  least  two  Canadian  provinces  had 
stopped  all  hunting  of  beaver.  Also  the  whim  of  fashion  had  shifted 
from  beaver  to  mink  and  fox.  Miraculously,  thanks  to  game  lovers 
and  faithful  game  wardens,  beaver  came  back.     It  is  in  a  healthy, 


I20  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

plentiful  condition  to-day ;  but  that  is  no  reason  for  relaxing  game 
laws  and  permitting  the  cruel  work  of  game  hogs  to  slaughter  out 
of  season  old  and  young,  male  and  female. 

In  the  1916  New  York  auction  sales,  beaver  sold  at  $12.75. 
By  1920,  the  price  was  running  $15  to  $20  in  the  Montreal,  New 
York  and  St.  Louis  sales  —  not  so  great  an  advance  as  in  other  furs  ; 
but  beaver  during  the  years  of  closed  seasons  went  out  of  fashion ; 
and  it  is  to  be  hoped  it  will  stay  shghtly  out  of  fashion  for  the  next 
ten  years ;  till  beaver  are  plentiful  as  in  the  opening  of  the  19th 
century.  In  the  spring  sales  of  1920,  21,000  beaver  were  sold  at 
St.  Louis,  9902  at  New  York,  14,000  in  London,  and  such  a  very 
large  number  in  Montreal  that  they  really  represented  more  than 
one  year's  crop.  But  practically  the  spring  of  1920  saw  almost 
80,000  beaver  sold ;  and  the  spring  sale  is  only  one  of  three  sales  a 
year. 

At  the  same  auctions  the  sales  of  nutria  ran  150,000  for  St.  Louis, 
58,000  for  New  York,  20,500  for  London.  Nutria  prices  ran  50 
cents  to  $6.10,  which  is  not  far  short  of  beaver  values  when  you 
consider  the  relative  size  of  the  skins.  In  fact,  on  the  base  of  size 
nutria  went  higher  than  beaver ;  for  the  size  of  the  nutria  is  16 
to  19  inches  with  a  tail  of  about  12  inches;  while  the  size  of  the 
beaver  is  3  to  4  feet.  The  size  is,  of  course,  another  way  to  differ- 
entiate the  two  skins. 

Beaver  cannot  be  farmed  in  a  domesticated  sense.  It  requires 
too  large  ranging  ground.  It  must  be  conserved  and  protected  by 
closed  seasons  in  large,  well-stocked  wild  life  parks,  such  as  Algonquin 
Park,  Ontario. 

The  beaver  mates  In  its  second  year  for  life  and  In  three  months 
produces  its  young  —  2  to  3  cubs.  The  food  consists  of  all  aquatic 
vegetables,  the  shoots  of  raspberries,  the  leaves  of  willows,  aspens, 
poplars.     It  must  have  an  abundance  of  vegetable  food. 

The  engineering  feats  of  the  beaver  have  been  magnified  In 
works  of  fiction  almost  laughably,  but  In  spite  of  errors  as  to  facts, 
it  would  be  hard  to  exaggerate  the   beaver's   engineering   ablUty. 


BEAVER  AND  NUTRIA  121 

When  he  selects  a  habitat,  he  builds  a  dam.  He  does  this  so  he 
will  have  deep  water  for  a  retreat  against  enemies,  especially  in 
winter  and  time  of  drought.  His  entrance  to  his  nest  or  house  is 
always  below  water ;  but  his  dwelling  is  a  shelf  above  the  water 
line.  When  he  begins  to  construct  the  dam,  it  is  true  he  brings 
the  soft  clay  and  earth  in  his  mouth  for  a  foundation ;  but  it  is  not 
true  that  he  spanks  the  clay  down  with  his  tail  for  a  trowel.  The 
only  use  he  makes  of  his  tail  is  as  a  rudder,  when  he  swims,  like 
the  fish,  and  as  a  balance  when  he  sits  up  to  saw  wood  with  his  teeth, 
as  a  bird  balances  itself  with  its  tail  on  a  branch.  Without  the 
tail,  the  bird's  heavy  breast  in  front  of  the  feet  would  topple  it 
forward.  If  you  doubt  this,  watch  how  fledglings  cannot  fly  till 
they  get  the  tail  feathers,  how  a  hen  has  difficulty  keeping  her 
balance  on  a  roost  when  she  is  molting  her  tail  feathers.  Having 
patted  down  a  layer  of  earth  with  his  paws,  the  beaver  goes  ashore 
and  cuts  down  young  saplings.  Cases  are  on  record  where  he  has 
cut  saplings  almost  12  inches  in  diameter.  If  possible,  these  sap- 
lings are  so  felled  that  they  crash  down  where  the  dam  is  building. 
If  they  don't  fall  in  the  right  place,  the  beaver  hauls  them  over  by 
his  teeth.  I  don't  know  whether  two  beavers  ever  pull  on  the  same 
haul,  for  I  have  never  seen  them  do  it;  but  I  have  seen  saplings 
in  a  dam  that  required  the  strength  of  more  than  one  beaver,  and 
they  have  not  been  windfall.  They  may,  however,  have  been  afloat. 
For  such  tasks,  nature  has  provided  the  beaver  with  long  curved 
teeth,  resembHng  more  than  anything  else  I  know  a  pair  of  small 
garden  rose-bush  shears.  I  have  a  pair  of  such  beaver  teeth  taken 
from  a  beaver  trapped  in  Cumberland  Lake  region  that  would  easily 
span  the  forearm  of  a  man,  or  leg  of  a  small  horse.  More  earth, 
more  sticks,  more  saplings  complete  the  dam.  The  beaver  then 
constructs  his  house  with  similar  methods.  If  the  colony  grows, 
the  dam  will  yearly  grow  with  more  workers,  and  the  number  of 
houses  will  increase  till  the  stream  or  lake  literally  backs  water 
and  floods  adjacent  land.  This  happened  in  Algonquin  Park, 
Ontario,  during  the  closed  years,  till  settlers  outside  the  limits  of 


122  THE  FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

the  park  had  to  complain  of  flooded  lands  and  the  colonies  of  the 
beavers,  themselves,  spread  outside  the  park;  and  whole  families 
of  Indians  camped  on  the  edge  of  the  park  to  slaughter  the  rodents 
who  ventured  outside  limits. 

This  illustrates  the  necessity  of  large  and  naturally  appropriate 
ranging  ground  in  any  game  preserve,  or  fur  farm  for  beavers,  and 
in  view  of  the  value  of  the  fur  to  Canada's  national  income,  I  do 
not  think  too  wide  an  area  of  wild  lands  can  be  set  aside  to  preserve 
the  beaver,  not  as  a  wild  life  specimen,  but  as  a  source  of  national 
income.  The  beaver  works  at  night,  but  not  being  an  eight-hour 
man,  he  begins  work  and  can  be  seen  at  sunset.  Fur  bearers,  as 
far  as  I  have  been  able  to  observe  them,  abhor  union  hours,  though 
they  live  in  communities  in  peace  and  ask  only  laws  to  prevent  their 
destruction.  As  far  as  each  beaver  is  concerned,  he  is  an  individ- 
ualist in  his  own  house.  Another  point  —  if  the  current  is  strong, 
it  is  a  fact  the  beaver  curves  his  dam  up  stream.  That  is  a  pretty 
fine  point  for  animal  intelligence,  whether  you  call  it  instinct,  or 
thought.  Beaver  houses  are  from  a  few  feet  to  15  feet  in  diameter 
and  five  feet  above  water  line.  The  muscles  of  the  beaver's  jaws 
are  literally  massive  for  his  hard  timber-sawing  jobs  —  whether 
the  result  of  centuries  of  selective  survival  of  the  fit  and  death  of 
the  weak,  or  so  originally  created  —  I  don't  know.  His  favorite 
timber  for  house  building  is  poplar,  cottonwood,  willow,  birch,  young 
elm,  box  aspen  —  all  soft  woods.  His  feet  are  webbed  or  palmated 
as  all  aquatic  fur  bearers  are.  Beaver  was  coin  of  the  realm  for 
centuries  in  all  Canada.  Skins  were  not  passed  as  coin,  but  values 
were  computed  in  beaver  skins.  Until  the  '90's  of  the  last  century, 
the  Hudson's  Bay  Company  used  to  cut  down  its  lead  tea  chests 
into  round  coins  on  which  were  stamped  i  B,  |^  B,  i  B  and  the  dis- 
trict from  which  issued  —  YF  —  EM  —  NH  —  York  Factory, 
East  Main,  Norway  House ;  and  these  coins  passed  as  currency  at 
all  Company  stores  ;  but  of  this  I  have  given  a  full  account  in  another 
volume  on  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company  —  "The  Conquest  of  the 
Great  North  West." 


BEAVER  AND  NUTRIA  123 

Come  now  to  nutria,  whose  fur  is  a  little  brother  to  beaver, 
though  the  nutria,  himself,  is  no  relation. 

Nutria  comes  from  South  America,  from  a  little  rat  known  as 
the  Coypu,  somewhat  resembling  our  own  Northern  muskrat. 
He,  too,  is  aquatic.  His  fur,  too,  was  first  used  for  beaver  hats  and 
felting,  till  beaver  became  so  scarce,  the  plucked  nutria  came  on  the 
market  as  a  good  substitute.  Naturally,  he  is  a  delicate  yellow 
brown,  with  a  fine  soft  under  fur.  He  grows  well  in  captivity, 
becomes  a  great  pet  and  can  be  bought  for  fur  farming  purposes  at 
$S  a  pair.  His  favorite  diet  in  domestic  life  is  corn,  stale  bread, 
cabbages,  maple  leaves  and  wood. 

His  native  range  runs  from  Peru  and  Brazil  to  Patagonia ;  and 
best  skins  come  from  the  temperate  zones.  His  length  is  about 
20  inches  with  a  tail  9  inches ;  and  the  catch  used  to  run  from 
300,000  to  500,000  skins  a  year.  When  Uruguay  skins  used  to  sell 
at  48  cents,  Argentina  South  skins  used  to  sell  at  ^3.50  to  $5,  and 
these  prices  run  in  the  United  States  trade  from  50  cents  for  poor 
and  small  to  ^6  for  good  and  full  sized. 

Nutria  resembles  our  Rocky  Mountain  marmot.  The  rough 
hairs  are  always  plucked  and  under  fur  used  to  be  sold  dyed  as  "nu- 
tria seal."  I  doubt  if  this  "nutria  seal"  ever  equalled  our  "muskrat 
seal"  and  rather  suspect  it  was  unprime,  faded  fur,  or  side  and 
belly  fur  rubbed  by  wear. 

The  kittens  of  the  nutria  run  from  4  to  6  a  family;  and  the 
fur  will  always  be  a  favorite  on  the  American  market,  where  the  cli- 
mate does  not  demand  as  heavy  a  fur  as  beaver  except  for  motor- 
ing, which  has  been  one  of  the  chief  causes  in  restoring  the  heavy 
furs  to  favor.  In  a  country,  where  of  8  million  cars,  at  least  a  third 
are  long-distance  touring  cars,  the  demand  for  heavy  furs  is  bound 
to  increase,  just  as  improvement  in  highways  permits  the  touring 
car  to  supplant  the  Pullman  with  its  increasing  scale  of  fares. 

The  increased  use  of  touring  cars  is  one  reason  why  the  American 
trade  is  bound  to  see  increased  demand  for  heavy  furs.  Look 
at  the  motor  coats   in  the  shop  windows  if  you  want  to  forecast 


124  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

the  need  for  farming  and  increasing  the  diminishing  supply  of  heavy- 
furs.  When  touring  cars  numbered  only  a  few  thousands,  you 
could  buy  a  good  beaver  coat  for  $2CX)  to  $300.  That  was  in  19 14. 
You  can't  buy  the  same  coat  to-day  even  with  an  increased  supply 
of  beaver,  under  $500  to  $700 ;  so  when  beaver  prices  fell  off  in  1920, 
the  wise  old  traders,  whose  finances  permitted  it,  put  their  best 
beaver  pelts  back  in  storage  for  future  demand. 

Size  for  size,  beaver  is  to-day  cheaper  than  nutria. 

Nutria  are  trapped  only  from  May  to  October,  chiefly  by  the 
half-blood  race  of  Gauchos  in  South  America.  The  flesh  like  the 
beaver  and  the  muskrat  is  prized  for  food. 


CHAPTER  XII 
CONCERNING  FUR  SEALS 

Only  two  types  of  Seals  may  be  considered  as  fur  bearers. 

They  are  the  Alaska  Fur  Seal  and  the  Newfoundland  or  North 
Atlantic  Harp  Seal. 

The  Alaska  Fur  Seal  is  one  of  the  rarest  and  most  highly  priced 
furs.  The  Harp  Seal  is  one  of  the  cheaper  furs  but  recently  seen 
on  the  American  market,  very  becoming  to  children  and  people  of 
fair  complexion,  with  leather  strength  in  the  skin  proper,  but  too 
recently  on  the  market  to  say  how  durable  the  fur  will  prove  in  wear 
and  tear.  It  should  certainly  prove  as  durable  as  Alaska  Seal, 
which  is  essentially  a  fur  for  careful  usage.  The  two  furs  can  never 
possibly  be  mistaken  for  each  other.  Alaska  Seal  is  a  deep  golden 
black  brown.  Harp  Seal  at  time  of  writing  is  a  light  bluish  gray 
fur  in  its  natural  color ;  and  up  to  the  present,  it  is  an  undyed  fur ; 
but  any  time,  some  new  process  may  do  for  it  what  dyeing  has 
done  for  the  muskrat  and  rabbit  —  in  which  case,  it  will  be  up  to 
Canada  and  Newfoundland  to  take  such  precautions  to  preserve 
Harp  Seal  life  as  the  American  Government  has  taken  to  preserve 
Alaska  Seal  life. 

No  doubt,  for  another  generation  at  least,  Canadians  and 
Englishmen  will  resent  the  international  treaty  that  forever  ended 
pelagic,  or  deep-sea  sealing.  With  that  controversy,  a  book  on  the 
fur  trade  has  nothing  to  say. 

Technically,  perhaps,  legally,  the  contention  of  Canada,  Eng- 
land and  Japan  may  have  justification.  "Are  not  the  high  seas 
outside  the  three-mile  zone,  and  especially  outside  the  sixty-mile 


126  THE  FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

zone,  open  and  free  to  all  the  nations  of  the  world  ? "  they  ask. 
Yes  and  no !  They  are  if  no  evil  is  worked  to  the  interests  of  the 
whole  world.  They  are  not,  for  instance,  free  to  pirates  and  mur- 
derers. They  are  not  open  and  free  to  a  submarine  that  might  go 
out  as  a  robber  of  merchant  ships  conveying  international  gold  | 

settlements  from  one  country  to  another. 

But  there  is  still  another  argument  in  the  quiver  of  Canada. 
"Why,"  Canada  might  ask,  "should  we  allow  Hudson  Bay  to  be 
an  open  free  sea  to  all  traders  in  whales  and  peltries  from  any  na- 
tion in  the  world  —  when  by  international  marine  law  Hudson  Bay 
is  not  an  open  sea  —  why  should  we  allow  Hudson  Bay  to  be  an 
open  sea  to  all  comers,  if  we  are  ruled  out  of,  not  only  the  three-mile 
zone,  but  the  sixty-mile  zone,  or  for  that  matter  the  6000  miles, 
where  Alaska  Seals  are  known  to  range  for  at  least  six  months  of 
the  year .''  Especially,  why  are  we  to  be  forbidden  to  seal,  if  ships 
from  South  America  can  still  hoist  a  South  American  flag  and  prey 
on  seal  life  as  soon  as  it  becomes  prolific  enough  for  South  American 
poachers  to  hoist  South  American  flags  and  go  into  the  game  of 
piratical  deep  sea  sealing?" 

And  to  that  last  question,  there  is  no  answer.  It  is  the  great 
defect  of  the  treaty  stopping  pelagic  sealing  that  South  American 
countries  were  not  signatories  to  the  treaty.  Up  to  the  present, 
the  contingency  has  not  arisen.  When  seals  are  once  more  prolific 
as  when  the  American  Government  took  over  Alaska,  that  question 
will  have  to  be  answered ;  but  we  don't  need  to  cross  that  bridge 
till  we  come  to  it. 

The  best  answer  to  Canada's  complaint  is  the  simple  fact  of 
results.  The  stoppage  of  pelagic  sealing  has  saved  the  Alaska  Seal 
from  the  fate  of  the  Sea  Otter.  It  has  saved  the  Alaska  Seal  from 
extermination. 

Also  I  don't  suppose  the  London  dyers  of  seal  will  get  over  their 
grievance  for  another  generation.  "We  perfected  the  most  perfect 
seal  dye  ever  devised.  It  could  not  be  imitated  or  beaten.  Came 
the  War,  and  you  lured  our  dyers  away  with  this  secret."     Tech- 


CONCERNING  FUR  SEALS  127 

nically  and  legally,  I  suppose,  that  contention  has  its  rights.  The 
case  will  be  decided  by  the  courts  soon ;  but  the  points  interesting 
to  the  fur  trade  are  these : 

Sealing  under  the  treaty  is  operated  by  the  United  States  Gov- 
ernment. You  could  not  have  these  seal  skins  in  any  case.  The 
United  States  is  the  greatest  buyer  of  manufactured  seal  skins  in 
the  world.  In  the  War,  you  had  not  the  man-power  to  go  on  with 
your  great  dye  works.  We  had.  Why  should  we  have  let  our  U. 
S.  Government-owned  seals  rot  unused  in  warehouses,  for  lack  of 
dyeing  processes,  which  you  could  not  use  —  especially  as  by  treaty 
we  pay  you  a  royalty  on  all  skins  taken  to  make  up  your  loss  in  pel- 
agic sealing  ?  Why  should  we  ship  raw  skins  to  you  to  be  sold  at 
slaughter  prices,  when  you  could  not  dye,  only  to  buy  them  back 
manufactured  at  excess  prices  ?  When  seal  life  was  prolific,  seal 
coats  sold  in  Hudson's  Bay  store  in  Winnipeg  at  retail  prices  of  $200 
to  $300.  Under  the  destruction  of  pelagic  sealing,  seal  coats  went 
up  to  $1000  for  poor,  $1800  for  medium,  $2000  for  good.  If  we  can 
increase  seal  life  to  a  plentiful  supply,  coats  will  again  sell  at  $200 
to  $300.  We  are  thinking  of  satisfying  the  demands  of  the  trade. 
Under  your  method  of  procedure,  you  were  totally  destroying  the 
trade,  as  the  trade  in  Sea  Otter  has  been  totally  destroyed. 

One  more  point,  when  the  argument  is  at  its  bitterest,  keep  in 
mind  it  was  not  the  American  fur  trader  forced  action  in  the  treaty. 
The  trades  stood  back  from  the  dispute.  The  influence  that  forced 
action  was  the  lover  of  wild  life  —  the  Camp  Fire  Club  of  New  York, 
which  by  a  volunteer  unpaid  campaign  of  publicity  aroused  public 
opinion  all  over  the  world  to  the  danger  of  exterminating  all  Alaska 
seal  Ufe.  No  American  fur  company  had  anything  to  do  with 
that  campaign  of  publicity  and  aroused  public  opinion ;  for  the 
leases  of  the  American  company  for  the  Fur  Seal  Islands  had  expired. 
They  were  no  longer  making  enough  to  pay  expenses ;  and  the 
United  States  Government  was  spending  millions  on  patrol  boats 
that  could  not  prevent  killing  outside  the  legal  zone.  More  seal 
pups  were  dying  every  year  of  starvation  from  the  kiUing  of  the 


128  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

mothers  by  the  poachers  than  either  the  poachers  could  total  or 
the  fur  companies  kill  legally ;  and  the  poaching  was  done  so  cruelly 
and  hurriedly  that  thousands  of  seals  were  flayed  alive. 

Keep  that  fact  in  mind,  when  the  controversy  comes  up  again, 
as  up  it  will  come  just  as  soon  as  poachers  hoist  the  flag  of  any 
South  American  nation,  which  was  not  a  signatory  to  the  treaty. 

Now  for  the  Alaska  Fur  Seal,  itself ! 

It  is  short-necked,  flat-bodied,  low-lying,  clumsy,  ugly,  with 
short  front  flippers  and  short  hairy  claws,  and  no  external  ears 
and  an  over  hair  short,  close  and  of  no  fur  value.  It  is  the  under 
pelage  is  the  fur  of  the  trade.  Hornaday  says  the  Fur  Seal  is  not 
a  true  seal  at  all  but  a  Sea  Bear.  Henry  Elliot's  book  on  the  Fur 
Seal  is  the  classic  of  Alaskan  literature  and  should  be  read  by  all 
disputants  ;  for  Elliot  made  his  survey  thirty  years  before  there  was 
any  controversy. 

The  Alaska  Seal  spends  nine  months  of  every  year  as  a  deep 
sea  cruiser,  circling  from  Alaska  half-way  down  the  Mid-Pacific, 
back  inland  towards  California  Coasts  and  then  northward  to  the 
Aleutian  Islands,  where  it  bears  its  young.  Why  It  chose  the  Fur 
Seal  Islands  of  Alaska,  Japan  and  Russia  for  Its  lying-in  hospital  — 
science  does  not  know.  The  rookeries  of  two  islands  In  Bering  Sea 
are  the  favorite  lying-in  hospitals  for  bringing  forth  the  young. 
The  why  of  that  is  also  absolutely  unknown.  The  Seal  of  the  Jap- 
anese and  Russian  Islands  have  not  a  pelt  ranking  high  as  the  Alas- 
kan.    The  why  of  that  is  also  unknown. 

The  seal  cruises  the  6000-mile  circuit  without  once  touching 
lands  which  are  not  submerged.  St.  Paul  and  St.  George  of  the 
Pribilofs  are  the  great  landing  places.  Hither  come  the  seal  the  first 
fifteen  days  of  May,  regularly  as  the  green  warblers  pass  over  the 
Eastern  States  to  Hudson  Bay,  the  first  ten  days  in  May.  By 
September,  the  young  are  old  enough  to  cruise.  By  November, 
not  a  seal  is  left  on  the  Seal  Islands.  Mating  occurs  immediately 
after  the  birth  of  the  young.  Each  male  fights  for  a  harem  of  six 
to  ten  ladies ;  and  the  fight  is  the  cruelest  thing  in  all  the  cruelties 


BEAVER 

(stretched  m  hoop) 


..Weasel   16  inches 

[ .  ._  Mink  30  inches  -  . 

I. Skunk    30  inches. 

. Ton    4S  inches  -  — 

. Otter   60  inches 


STRETCHING  BOARDS 


3TRETCH1N0  BOARDS  WITH  CENTRE  WEOCE: 


Courtesy  Canadian  Conservation  Committee. 


CONCERNING  FUR  SEALS  129 

of  fur  life.  Unless  the  superfluous  "bachelors"  are  killed  by  the 
fur  trader  —  I  wish  sentimentalists  who  rail  against  fur  as  vege- 
tarians do  against  flesh  diet  would  note  well  —  unless  the  super- 
fluous "bachelors"  were  killed,  they  would  kill  thousands  of  mothers 
and  thousands  of  pups,  literally  pound  them  and  bite  them  to  death 
in  the  rough  and  tumble  scrabble ;  so  the  aim  of  the  fur  trade  in 
preserving  seal  life  is  to  drive  off  these  superfluous  "bachelors" 
and  despatch  them  painlessly  as  possible,  leaving  the  mothers  and 
pups  in  security  and  peace. 

Obviously,  poachers  shooting  at  every  seal  head  in  sight  could 
not  distinguish  mothers  from  "bachelors";  and  every  mother 
killed  left  a  pup  to  perish  —  in  fact,  often  left  two  pups  to  perish, 
for  the  two-year-old  also  needed  his  mother's  care.  Having  borne 
her  young  on  the  naked  rocks,  the  mother  put  to  sea,  leaving  the 
youngsters  sprawling  in  thousands.  Coming  back,  she  made 
straight  for  her  own  offspring  and  fed  it.  How  did  she  know  her 
own  young  from  the  thousands  who  were  not  hers  ?  How  does 
the  sheep  in  a  herd  of  5000  know  the  bleat  and  smell  of  her  own 
lamb  ^  We  have  not  begun  to  probe  even  the  surface  of  knowledge 
of  fur-bearing  life. 

When  Henry  Elliot  made  his  survey  of  Seal  Life  in  1872-3, 
there  were  between  three  and  four  million  seals  on  the  two  islands. 
When  the  Camp  Fire  Club  called  attention  to  the  extinction  of 
seals  in  1910-11,  there  were  fewer  than  200,000  alive,  of  which  only 
80,000  were  mothers,  1400  necessary  bulls,  150  growing  bulls,  and 
the  rest  classified  as  "young." 

Ten  more  years  would  have  finished  the  Seals  as  these  very 
years  finished  the  Sea  Otter. 

Briefly  as  I  can  condense  it,  here  is  the  history  of  the  Alaska  Seals. 

The  United  States  bought  Alaska  in  1867  for  $7,200,000. 

The  Russians  had  never  been  hunters  of  the  seal. 

In  1870,  the  Islands  were  leased  to  the  Alaska  Commercial  Com- 
pany for  twenty  years,  only  100,000  young  seals  a  year  to  be  killed ; 
rent  $317,500. 


I30  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

In  1872,  the  Alaska  Company  spent  $ioo,cxx)  in  cash  to  popular- 
ize Seal  Fur  in  London.  That  was  mistake  the  first.  They  ought 
to  have  popularized  the  fur  in  America, 

By  1880,  deep-sea  sealing,  or  pelagic  sealing,  by  means  of  long- 
range  rifles  fired  from  ships,  was  taking  more  seals  than  the  Com- 
pany, whose  catch  had  fallen  to  8400  a  year. 

By  1886,  six  foreign  nations  were  engaged  In  pelagic  sealing. 

By  1890,  the  North  American  Company  succeeded  the  Alaska 
Company  as  the  renters  of  the  Islands.  The  seal  catch  at  sea 
numbered  this  year  40,000. 

By  1891,  the  United  States  and  England  agreed  —  you  recall 
the  term  "Modus  Vivendi"  —  to  close  Bering  Sea  to  the  poachers ; 
but  that  did  not  prevent  the  poachers  hanging  on  the  verge  of  the 
legal  sixty-mile  zone  and  potting  the  incoming  and  outgoing  seals 
cruising. 

By  1894,  almost  62,000  seals  were  killed  by  the  poachers. 

In  1895,  30,000  pups  perished  of  starvation  and  almost  60,000 
seals  were  shot  by  eighty  different  vessels  poaching.  The  number 
of  seals  legally  killed  was  about  15,000.  Hornaday  says  the  cost  of 
patrolling,  which  did  nothing  to  preserve  seals  and  could  do  nothing, 
had  now  totalled  ^2,000,000.  (See  his  figure  130  —  Natural  His- 
tory, Vol.  I,  or  Dr.  Evermann's  Seal  pamphlet  of  1919.) 

By  1898,  all  American  citizens  were  forbidden  pelagic  sealing; 
so  the  poachers  went  to  Japan  and  registered  under  the  Japanese 
flag.  Up  to  this  period,  there  were  more  American  poachers  than 
Canadian. 

By  1910-11,  there  were  not  200,000  Fur  Seals  alive ;  but  England 
had  $2,000,000  invested  in  Seal  Dye  works,  which  employed  3000 
dye  workers. 

Getting  complicated,  wasn't  It .?  And  the  seals  kept  on  per- 
ishing of  starvation.  Seal  coats  now  cost  $2000.  The  raw  pelts, 
ruined  by  promiscuous  shooting  and  hurried.  Inexperienced  skinning, 
were  bringing  only  $10  to  $40  each,  when  they  ought  to  have  been 
worth  on  the  basis  of  retail  price  $200  each.     The  Japanese  poachers 


CONCERNING  FUR  SEALS  131 

now  numbered  thirty-five ;  but  note  —  please  —  these  were  mostly 
Americans  and  Canadians  under  a  Japanese  flag. 

The  letter  of  the  law  was  dead,  and  the  spirit  of  the  law  was  a 
joke. 

Then  the  Camp  Fire  Club  got  busy.  Seal  articles  appeared 
everywhere.  Seal  speeches  became  part  of  the  great  Conservation 
Propaganda  in  vogue  in  those  years.  I  did  not  know  I  was  a  victim 
of  that  propaganda,  but  on  looking  up  my  files  I  find  I  wrote  about 
seals  exactly  what  a  member  of  the  great  Revillons  Fur  Company 
had  told  me  of  the  horrors  of  skinning  seals  alive ;  and  I  took  their 
word  because  they  were  a  French  firm  not  involved  financially  to 
the  extent  of  a  centime.  They  showed  me  some  Sea  Otter  they 
had  bought  that  year ;  and  predicted  exactly  what  another  ten  years 
would  do  to  Sea  Otter.     And  their  statement  was  only  too  true. 

Resulted  the  international  treaty  stopping  all  pelagic  sealing; 
and  whatever  the  defects  of  that  treaty,  give  it  credit  for  saving 
the  seal.  The  United  States  Government  took  over  all  sealing 
operations,  on  which  Japan  was  to  receive  a  royalty  of  15  per  cent 
on  all  proceeds,  England  10  per  cent.  During  completely  closed 
seasons,  England  and  Japan  were  to  receive  each  $10,000  a  year. 
The  pity  is  South  American  Governments  were  not  signatories  to 
that  treaty ;  and  the  question  is  bound  to  erupt  again ;  for  Seal 
Life  has  been  saved  and  has  come  back. 

The  Seal  Herd  in  191 8  numbered  496,432  of  which  285,000  are 
bearing  mothers,  about  5000  aged  bulls,  and  the  rest  growing  young- 
sters. By  1922,  or  1926  at  latest,  it  is  calculated  seal  Hfe  will 
be  producing  more  seal  fur  than  in  its  palmiest  days  without  the  loss 
of  a  mother  or  a  pup.  The  increase  will  now  go  ahead  at  a  rate  of 
compound  interest,  which  explains  why  the  trade  is  holding  off  a 
little  from  high  prices  for  seal  pelts.  It  is  expected  Alaska  Seal  will 
soon  be  selling  at  prices  as  cheap  as  its  imitation.  What  the  effect 
will  be  on  the  imitation  trade  is  one  of  the  technical  points  from 
which  a  layman  shies  back.  The  demand  for  Alaska  Seal  will  al- 
ways be  so  great,  especially  if  stimulated  by  low  prices,  that  I  do 


132  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

not  believe  there  will  ever  be  a  glutted  market;  but  the  poachers 
under  another  flag  will  undoubtedly  start  up  again. 

Meantime  the  record  of  the  Alaska  Seal  is  a  triumph  for  the 
preservation  of  fur-bearing  life,  and  points  the  way  how  to  preserve 
a  supply  of  furs  for  a  fur-hungry  world. 

The  present  classifications  for  Seal  are : 

Inches 

Wigs Above  55 

Extra  extra  large 49  to   55 

Extra  large 46  to  48 

Large 43   to  45 

Mediums 39  to  42 

Small  Mediums 35   to  38 

A  good  many  years  ago  when  cruising  the  shores  of  Labrador 
and  Newfoundland  on  a  commission  other  than  fur  life  I  little 
dreamed  that  the  Harp  Seals  floundering  on  the  rocky  coast  in  myr- 
iads with  the  plaintive  whimper  of  a  puppy  dog,  or  crying  child, 
would  ever  become  a  factor  in  fur. 

The  baby  Harps  were  in  those  days  captured  in  hundreds  of 
thousands  every  spring  for  their  blubber.  Boats  left  Newfoundland 
in  March,  to  spear  the  babies  on  the  floating  ice  floes ;  and  the 
tragedies  of  the  spring  Harp  Seal  hunt  are  a  story  in  themselves, 
that  would  fill  a  book.  I  used  to  go  out  to  the  harbor  of  Kitty 
Viddy  outside  St.  John's,  Newfoundland,  and  listen  to  the  thrilling 
yarns  of  old  sealers  who  had  been  carried  off  by  a  floe  separating 
from  the  other  ice  and  drifted  to  sea,  or  whose  steamer  had  been 
crushed  by  a  backwash  of  ice  in  a  Nor'-easter  gale  and  gone  down 
with  all  hands  who  did  not  escape  to  the  ice.  The  story  has  been 
told  again  and  again  by  the  late  Dr.  Harvey,  the  great  naturalist 
and  discoverer  of  the  great  devil  fish,  and  by  Sir  Patrick  McGrath, 
both  of  whom  I  met  on  that  trip  and  number  as  friends,  whom  it  is 
good  to  remember.  I  heard  the  same  story  up  at  Greguet  on  the 
Straits  of  Belle  Isle  and  off  Battle  Harbor,  Labrador,  where  Strath- 


CONCERNING  FUR  SEALS  133 

cona  of  Hudson's  Bay  fame  spent  his  youth  and  where  Dr.  Grenfell 
to-day  has  transformed  the  lives  of  a  whole  suffering  population  of 
deep-sea  fishermen. 

Who  of  us  then  suspected  the"  little  Harp  would  ever  be  rated 
as  a  fur  f  Fur !  Worthless !  They  laughed  at  my  tenderfoot 
questions  and  pitied  my  ignorance.  Yet  last  winter  I  saw  Harp 
Seal  coats  on  women  who  were  leaders  of  fashion  in  Europe  and 
America.  I  took  tea  last  winter  at  the  Colony  Club,  New  York, 
with  two  Harp  Seal  coats  ;  and  as  I  listened  to  the  chatter  of  fashion 
and  fun,  I  kept  hearing  the  sing  of  the  wind  in  our  mast  off  Labrador, 
the  swish  of  backwash  in  an  October  storm,  that  had  wrecked  twelve 
fishing  vessels,  and  the  whimper,  whimper,  of  the  young  Harps,  who 
looked  up  at  us  from  the  desolate  rocks. 

The  fur  trade  has  moved  at  a  swift  pace  in  these  intervening 
years. 

The  little  spotted  Harp  easily  yields  Newfoundland  a  quarter 
of  a  million  dollars  a  year,  and  if  the  fashion  for  Harp  fur  increases, 
he  will  yield  more.  I  do  not  think  the  Harp  will  be  easily  exter- 
minated ;  but  it  is  up  to  Newfoundland  to  have  a  care.  Who  can 
say  ?  He  is  amply  protected  by  the  danger  of  the  quest  in  spring 
and  the  frightful  mortality  among  the  sailors;  but  that  did  not 
save  the  Sea  Otter. 

The  baby  Harp  has  a  thick  coat  of  thick,  almost  woolly  fur, 
white  as  snow,  soft  as  swan's  down.  This  is  shed  within  a  few 
months  and  replaced  by  a  bluish  spotted  hair  fur.  The  fur  is  thick 
and  the  hide  tough  as  shoe  leather.  He  should  be  a  good  wearer. 
If  he  is,  let  Newfoundland  be  ten  times  more  careful  to  forefend 
depletion.  The  Harp  is  now  hunted  only  in  spring.  If  he  were 
hunted  in  summer,  he  would  go  the  way  of  Sea  Otter.  Hunted 
he  will  never  be  in  winter.  The  gales  beating  an  iron  coast  of  pre- 
cipitous rock  forfend  against  that ;  but  summer  hunting  or  hunting 
before  the  mother  brings  forth  her  young  brings  its  own  Nemesis; 
and  that  is  the  end  of  the  fur. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

THE  OTHER  GREAT  STAPLE  FURS.  SKUNK,  RACCOON,  BADGER, 
WOLVERINE,  CAT,  COUGAR,  LYNX,  RED  AND  WHITE  FOX,  BEAR, 
WOLF,  ERMINE,  CHINCHILLA,  MOLE,  RABBIT,  FITCH,  OPOSSUM 

While  the  rare  furs  are  so  spectacular  that  they  catch  the 
public  eye  first,  in  the  great  volume  of  the  world's  fur  trade,  it  is 
what  might  be  called  the  lesser  furs  and  the  commoner  furs  that 
swell  the  aggregate  and  protect  the  most  of  people  from  cold  weather. 

Skunk 

Skunk  may  truthfully  be  classified  as  both  a  common  fur  and 
one  of  the  best  furs  of  the  trade. 

For  years,  the  public  would  not  buy  skunk  as  skunk.  It  had 
to  be  given  such  fake  names  as  "black  sable"  to  get  it  across  to  the 
trade.  That  day  is  past.  The  beauty  of  a  perfect  black  skunk 
combined  with  the  durability  of  the  fur  has  increased  it  in  public 
favor  and  sent  prices  up ;   and  to-day  skunk  is  skunk. 

The  catch  of  skunk  in  America  alone  is  given  as  from  1,500,000 
to  1,600,000;  and  the  catch  shows  no  signs  of  diminishing;  and  the 
demand  could  consume  twice  the  catch.  It  is  both  trapped  and 
farmed,  the  farming  ventures  being  chiefly  located  in  Wisconsin 
and  Michigan  and  Prince  Edward  Island,  from  which  the  best  pelts 
come,  the  trapped  pelts  coming  from  every  part  of  America  from 
the  Southern  Sections  of  Manitoba  to  the  Rio  Grande.  As  always 
with  fur  bearers,  the  finest  fur  comes  from  the  North  in  proximity 
to  fresh  water,  that  seems  to  give  sheen  to  the  fur,  and  in  wooded 
areas,  which  protect  the  lustre  from  fading. 

134 


THE  OTHER  GREAT  STAPLE   FURS  135 

The  skunk  mates  in  February  or  March  and  brings  forth  six 
to  twelve  young  in  May.  The  babies  are  blind  for  three  weeks  and 
mature  in  six  months.  The  food  consists  of  chickens,  eggs,  grass, 
herbs,  crickets,  rats,  mice,  lizards  and  worms,  especially  such  worms  as 
are  harmful  to  vegetable  gardens,  like  the  army  worm  and  cutworm, 
and  wasps  and  hornets  and  all  the  hosts  of  creatures  commonly 
called  "varmints "  in  country  parlance.  I  am  aware  that  naturalists 
deny  the  skunk  is  a  raider  of  poultry  yards ;  but  as  a  child  living 
on  a  farm  near  Lake  Huron,  I  defy  any  farmer  to  subscribe  to  the 
naturalist's  dictum,  especially  if  there  are  eggs  and  baby  chicks. 
On  the  other  hand,  I  am  perfectly  aware  if  the  skunk  has  abundance 
of  other  food,  he  does  a  great  deal  more  good  than  harm  to  a  farm. 
He  devours  more  mischief  than  he  creates  and  will  not  turn  on  his 
obnoxious  perfumery  unless  attacked  by  dogs  or  alarmed  in  his 
lair.  I  know  he  seeks  to  nest  in  colonies,  where  farmers  object  — 
in  the  bottoms  of  stacks  and  under  loose  boards  in  a  shed  or  barn ; 
and  I  have  recollections  of  one  such  nest  as  almost  drove  us  out  of 
the  house  for  a  week,  when  a  collie  dog  undertook  to  expel  the 
intruder. 

As  many  as  twenty  skunks  are  born  of  one  family  and  that 
does  not  seem  to  indicate  any  shortened  supply  of  the  fur.  At  the 
same  time,  prices  for  skunk  skins  are  now  so  high,  that  may  give 
an  extra  incentive  to  trapping ;  and  the  fur  farm  promises  the  best 
way  out  for  the  fur  trade.  The  farm  should  be  located  distant  from 
neighbors  owing  to  the  odors ;  though  a  young  skunk  can  be  de- 
scented  with  little  pain  and  no  harm  to  himself.  This  process 
should  be  attempted  only  by  an  experienced  veterinarian,  or  skunk 
farmer,  and  it  is  fully  described  in  the  bulletin  of  the  Bureau  of  Biol- 
ogy, Washington.  It  is  well  to  remember  gasoline  will  deodorize 
"skunked"  clothing,  or  burying  the  material  in  the  earth  for  a  few 
days,  or  chloride  of  lime  will  destroy  the  smell  of  a  lair  but  will  also 
destroy  the  fibre  of  clothing. 

Though  there  are  seventeen  species  of  skunk,  a  general  descrip- 
tion covers  all  —  the  black  pelt,  jet  black  the  best  grade,  with  small 


136  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

patches  of  white  just  behind  the  neck,  a  bushy  tail  from  12  inches 
to  18  inches  long,  a  sharp  nose,  a  Httle  round  body,  prone  sharp- 
nosed  head  and  claws  like  knives.  In  science,  the  skunk  is  a  weasel. 
In  life,  he  is  a  relative  of  Cain,  an  outcast  and  pariah. 

In  the  trade,  skunks  are  graded  first  according  to  the  white 
on  his  pelt.  In  grade  II,  the  white  stripe  comes  to  the  shoulders. 
In  grade  III,  the  long  narrow  stripe  goes  down  the  back.  In  grade 
IV,  the  white  stripe  is  broad.  The  next  grade  is  as  to  quality  of 
fur  and  habitat;  and  it  is  a  queer  freak  of  nature  that  few  skunks 
come  from  two  of  the  best  fur  regions  in  America,  where  food  is 
abundant  —  Alaska  and  Labrador.  The  next  grading  is  as  to  large, 
medium,  small.  The  highest  grade  pelt  would  run  i  foot  to  18 
inches  long,  with  a  bushy  tail  as  long  as  the  body. 

The  Httle  spotted  skunk  is  known  as  "the  civet"  and  of  this 
there  are  fourteen  species. 

Skunks  do  not  readily  cHmb  trees,  but  they  can.  They  do  not 
swim,  but  are  the  prize  burrowers  next  to  badger  and  woodchuck, 
whose  homes  they  often  preempt.  Leaves  and  grass  line  the  nests, 
and  the  burrows  always  have  two  entrances,  which  places  the  skunk 
somewhat  in  the  class  of  the  beaver  for  craft  against  foes.  They 
undoubtedly  know  their  own  great  power  of  self-defence ;  for  I 
have  been  compelled  to  drive  two  miles  behind  a  skunk  on  a  wood- 
land road  for  the  simple  reason,  when  I  came  within  a  rod  of  him, 
his  tail  went  up  and  my  horse  refused  to  pass  him.  The  spray 
emitted  by  the  skunk  will  blind  an  enemy,  like  the  fluid  from  the 
devil  fish ;  and  having  sprayed  his  enemy,  the  skunk  scuttles  under 
cloud  of  the  stench  he  has  created. 

In  the  old  days,  the  price  ran  in  London  from  7  shillings  to  10 
shillings,  and  at  that  price,  from  19,000  to  20,000  sold  a  year.  To- 
day, 2,000,000  skunk  a  year  sell  in  London,  though  I  am  inclined 
to  think  these  figures  include  the  fitch,  or  polecat,  of  Europe,  a 
smaller  animal  by  at  least  six  to  eight  inches.  Skunk  pelts  in  the 
1920  American  sales  ran  from  $5.90  to  $9.20  in  New  York,  fitch  from 
I2fi  to  $3.50. 


THE  OTHER  GREAT  STAPLE   FURS  137 

The  Cat  Furs 

At  the  top  of  cat  furs  stands  the  Canadian  Lynx  as  to  quality 
and  price,  the  Cougar  as  to  size  and  cheapness  and  inferior  quahty 
of  the  fur,  with  Bay  Lynx,  Bob  Cat,  Wild  Cat  and  Domestic  Cat 
as  variations  between  in  prices  and  quality  of  furs. 

Canadian  Lynx  is  easily  the  king  of  the  cat  furs. 

He  is  an  eater  of  rabbits,  of  gophers,  of  marmots,  of  fish,  of 
flesh,  of  red  herring.  Everything  edible  is  a  filler  for  his  hungry 
maw;  but  in  a  season  when  rabbits  are  scarce.  Lynx  skin  is  poor, 
which  seems  to  prove  that  the  hare  and  rabbit  are  his  staple  foods. 

The  best  fur  is  a  sort  of  pepper  and  salt  gray  or  fawn  cream 
18  inches  deep  in  hair  and  pelage.  The  pencilled  ears  and  the  huge 
padded  fur  feet  are  the  marks  of  this  denizen  of  the  snowy  wastes. 
In  natural  histories  you  will  see  the  Lynx  ranging  ground  given  from 
Alaska  to  the  Rio  Grande.  In  the  fur  world,  best  Lynx  are  classi- 
fied not  farther  South  than  Minnesota ;  and  the  best  pelts  come 
from  Quebec,  Ontario  and  the  North  to  latitude  60.  The  Canadian 
Lynx  full-grown  measures  closer  to  4  feet  than  3,  and  the  weight 
runs  over  20  pounds.  He  is  a  tree  climber,  but  his  scream  and  his 
big  eyes  in  deeply  furred  head  are  much  more  terrifying  than  his 
prowess. 

The  lesser  cat  furs  are  from  the  Southern  areas  and  are  va- 
riously known  as  Bay  Lynx,  "Bob  Cat"  and  Wild  Cat.  These  all 
lack  the  pencilled  fur  of  the  ears  and  the  huge  fur-padded  feet. 
They  are  smaller  and  their  fur  more  spotted  —  so  spotted  in  some 
smaller  varieties  that  they  are  confused  with  the  "civet"  skunk 
and  "civet"  coon,  to  which  they  have  no  likeness  or  relationship 
whatever  but  in  the  smallness  of  size. 

The  belly  fur  of  all  the  Lynx  is  used  for  boas  and  trimmings, 
because  it  is  usually  worn  by  climbing.  Hudson  Bay  used  to  pro- 
duce 40,000  Canadian  Lynx  a  year;  but  this  catch  is  faUing  off 
owing,  perhaps,  to  depredations  on  the  hare.  The  best  fur  is  marked 
by  silver  and  black  tips  to  the  long  over  hair.  I  am  sorry  to  say  it 
can  be  dyed  to  imitate  finer  fur ;   and  this  seems  a  pity ;  for  Lynx 


138  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

is  a  beautiful  fur  in  itself  undyed ;  and  the  prices  justify  Lynx  being 
sold  always  as  Lynx.  In  Montreal  in  1920,  686  Lynx  sold  at  an 
average  of  ^62  to  ^45  for  the  various  grades ;  in  St.  Louis,  of 
$51  for  Northern  Lynx,  $12  for  Southern  Lynx,  and  $2.50  for  plain 
wild  cat ;  in  New  York,  for  $50  for  the  best  and  $1.50  for  New  Eng- 
land wild  cat. 

Cougar  or  Puma 

The  Cougar,  or  Rocky  Mountain  Lion,  is  a  poor  specimen  of  a 
lion  and  not  a  very  reputable  specimen  of  the  cat.  He  is  thin, 
slab-sided,  long-bodied,  low-set  and  not  so  large  as  the  tiger  or 
panther.  Cornered  he  will  fight;  and  in  the  days  of  old  blunder- 
buss fire-arms  with  short  range,  that  doubtless  give  rise  to  the  weird 
stories  of  his  terrors  to  pioneer  settlers  from  Tennessee  to  the  Rock- 
ies ;  but  he  is  an  arrant,  blood-thirsty  coward,  preying  only  on  crea- 
tures smaller  than  himself  and  indulging  in  such  nasty  wolf  tricks 
as  hanging  on  the  herds  of  stockmen  in  the  West  to  ham-string  the 
calves  and  colts,  of  which  I  have  known  as  many  young  as  10  to  18 
to  be  mutilated  by  this  stealthy  beast  of  prey  in  a  night,  round 
Calgary  district  in  its  early  ranching  days.  Its  fur  is  shallow  and 
suitable  only  for  rugs ;  though  the  hide  is  tough  as  leather ;  and 
every  cougar  rug  I  have  ever  seen  in  a  pioneer's  shanty  symbolized 
to  me  the  lives  of  so  many  smaller  fur  bearers  saved.  Though  I 
have  heard  the  unearthly  screams  at  night,  the  only  cougar  I  have 
ever  seen  was  many  years  ago  in  Okanogan  Valley,  British  Columbia. 
I  was  staying  at  the  home  of  the  first  settler  in  that  valley.  He  had 
just  set  out  the  first  orchard  in  that  fruit  country.  It  was  sunset. 
We  were  going  through  the  young  orchard,  when  we  noticed  a  slight 
movement  amid  the  evergreens  lining  the  orchard.  Some  young 
fawns  the  exact  color  of  the  yellowing  frost-touched  poplars  were 
stealing  shyly  down  to  drink,  when  we  became  aware  there  was 
another  watcher  at  the  drinking  pool  —  crouched  prone,  the  shade 
of  the  withered  grasses  —  a  cougar  of  respectable  size.  Our  fruit 
rancher  motioned  us  not  to  move  nor  speak;   but  before  he  could 


THE  OTHER  GREAT  STAPLE  FURS  139 

haul  up  his  rifle,  or  motion  his  dog,  the  cougar  leaped,  not  at  the 
fawn,  but  in  flight  back  to  the  woods,  where,  the  family  afterwards 
wrote  to  me,  they  heard  his  screaming  for  a  night  or  two.  He  may 
be  ignored  as  a  fur  bearer,  though  he  is  so  classified.  Forest  rangers 
in  the  Rockies  still  get  the  cougar  in  the  Upper  Mountains  and  they 
classify  them  always  as  "varmints." 

Domestic  Cat 

If  your  sympathies  have  ever  gone  out  to  the  stray  gutter  cats 
left  by  city  people  every  year  to  fend  for  themselves  when  the  hegira 
takes  place  to  the  country  and  to  summer  resorts  —  rejoice  !  There 
are  no  more  stray  cats.  The  craze  for  summer  furs  and  cheap  furs 
has  exterminated  the  gutter  cat.  It  has  also  exterminated  many 
a  beautiful  domestic  tommy,  who  mysteriously  disappears  to  the 
sheer  joy  and  multitudinous  increase  of  feathered  songsters.  I  have 
an  old  acquaintance  in  New  York,  whose  little  shop  I  have  patron- 
ized for  years,  drawn  in  the  first  place  by  the  beautiful  tortoise  shell 
and  black  cats,  which  always  sat  sedately  on  his  counter  and  came 
to  me  instinctively  for  petting.  For  the  last  year  or  two,  I  have 
missed  his  cats.     He  can  keep  only  one,  where  he  used  to  keep  three. 

"Where  are  your  beautiful  cats  ?"  I  asked. 

"Yes,"  he  answered.  "You  may  well  ask  that."  Then  he 
swore  in  Spanish.  "I  can't  keep  one.  I  suspect  if  you  look  hard 
enough,  you  will  find  them  round  the  necks  of  some  of  your  friends 
dyed  for  fox." 

And  It  is  true. 

The  domestic  cat  is  now  a  factor  in  the  fur  trade.  More  than 
three  millions  are  used  annually;  and  from  my  lawn  this  year,  I 
hear  more  feathered  songsters  than  I  have  known  for  ten  years, 
singing  a  glad  requiem  to  the  cats.  Blacks  and  browns  are  the 
favorites  of  the  trade ;  and  for  the  best  Dutch  cats,  prices  used  to 
run  3  ^  to  8  shiUings.  Silver  grays  are  rare.  All  are  dyed  for 
imitation  furs  and  in  the  spring  sales  of  1920,  prices  ran  from  $1.15 
to  55 j4  and  15^4  according  to  grade. 


140  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

Raccoons 

Raccoons,  as  I  have  told  in  the  account  of  dyeing  and  dressing, 
have  recently  come  in  high  favor.  In  the  '8o's,  the  demands  of 
the  trade  ran  to  600,000  a  year;  but  the  trade  to-day  could  use 
many  more  'coons ;  and  the  'coon  is  so  easily  domesticated,  he  is 
now  farmed.  His  family  runs  from  5  to  7  yearly.  He  weighs 
25  pounds,  full  grown,  and  measures  2  to  3  feet.  Though  he  pesters 
the  vegetable  garden  and  the  sweet  corn  patch,  he  pays  for  his 
depredations  in  frogs,  toads,  mice,  insects  and  pests  destroyed ; 
and  when  domesticated  is  easily  satisfied  with  vegetables  and  fruit 
of  a  discard  grade.  The  best  'coon  comes  from  the  States  south 
of  the  Canadian  boundary.  The  little  striped  'coon  known  as 
"civet"  is  now  classified  in  the  trade  as  Bassarisk.  It  hardly  needs 
to  be  told  the  'coon  burrows  in  hollow  trees  and  logs.  The  best 
fur  is  from  Wisconsin,  Indiana,  Missouri  and  Nova  Scotia,  and  Is 
the  grizzled  dark  bluish  with  the  well-pencilled  black  brown  stripe. 
The  pity  is  that  in  'coon  hunting  so  much  fur  is  taken  unprime  that 
it  is  sheer  waste  of  the  life  and  profits.  Prices  ran  in  1920,  in  Mon- 
treal for  43,000  from  ^30  to  $5  and  30^  to  nothing;  in  St.  Louis 
from  $14.50  for  Minnesotas,  to  $10  for  Eastern,  $4.50  for  Southern. 

Badger 

Badger  was  just  being  tried  out  as  a  fur  when  I  left  the  West 
and  was  in  great  favor.  To-day,  it  is  in  equal  favor  in  the  East. 
The  fur  is  a  yellowish  gray  with  over  hairs  of  light  brown  and  drab, 
white  at  the  tip.  The  beauty  of  this  fur  Is  Its  depth  and  downy  under 
pelage.  The  badger  is  low  set  and  like  an  Eastern  woodchuck.  The 
claws  on  his  forefeet  are  terrible  scratchers  and  the  badger  holes 
of  the  prairie  were  our  horror,  when  riding  off  the  road  at  night.  The 
badger  is  a  great  eater  of  insects  and  frogs,  but  he  is  also  a  pest 
to  the  Western  farmer ;  and  as  the  prairies  are  more  and  more  cut 
up  into  farms,  I  see  his  doom  sealed ;  and  considering  the  number 
of  accidents  ascrlbable  to  the  badger  holes,  I  have  nothing  to  say. 


THE  OTHER  GREAT  STAPLE   FURS  141 

It  seems  to  me  if  badger  is  to  be  preserved  as  a  fur,  it  must  be  pre- 
served by  fur  farming.  Weird  stories  are  current  yet  among  Western 
farmers  how  you  always  find  a  skunk  and  a  snake  in  a  badger  hole. 
If  you  do,  I  venture  to  say  you  will  always  find  the  snake  half  eaten ; 
and  where  the  skunk  preempts  a  badger  hole,  it  is  a  deserted  one ; 
for  the  skunk  like  the  evil  spirit  of  Scripture  ejects  the  true  owner 
of  the  house ;  but  it  is  true  you  do  find  both  denizens  in  deserted 
badger  holes.  I  know  city  naturalists  contradict  the  charge  that 
the  badger  is  a  curse  to  the  farmer ;  but  if  they  will  ride  across  the 
open  prairie  at  sunset  as  I  used  to  do,  and  come  home  without  a  fall, 
or  a  bad  stumble  almost  throwing  one  over  the  horse's  head,  it  will 
be  because  nature  notoriously  looks  after  greenhorns.  I  have 
ridden  all  my  life  and  am  almost  afraid  to  set  it  down  that  I  have 
never  been  pitched  but  it  was  because  I  learned  the  knack  of  getting 
my  horse's  head  up  before  he  rolled,  always  used  an  Indian  pony 
and  where  there  were  badger  holes,  kicked  my  feet  free  from  the 
stirrups.  Prices  on  badger  for  New  York  ran  from  4.^^  to  ^3.10; 
17,500  badger  were  sold  in  London  in  April;  almost  2000  in  New 
York;    almost   10,000  in  St.   Louis.     Wombat  is  the  Australian 

badger. 

Wolverine 

Of  the  wolverine,  I  have  given  a  fuller  account  in  the  second 
section  of  the  book.  He  is  about  the  size  of  a  low-set  dog  and  is 
marked  by  a  saddle  stripe  of  white  or  lighter  fur  on  his  back.  He 
measures  3  to  4  feet  and  has  a  dark  rich  brown  fur.  He  is  most 
abundant  in  Northern  Canada  and  is  the  great  robber  of  traps,  or 
anything  else  to  which  his  keen  sense  of  smell  leads  him.  I  have 
heard  old  Hudson's  Bay  men  say  if  he  couldn't  get  a  marten  to  eat, 
he  would  eat  the  trap ;  and  if  he  couldn't  get  the  trap,  he  would 
come  to  the  trapper's  shack  and  get  his  bacon,  and  if  he  couldn't 
get  his  bacon,  he  would  eat  the  trapper's  moccasins.  He  is  the 
thief  and  robber  of  the  trapper  world  and  is  so  cunning,  he  can  play 
with  a  trap  and  get  the  bait.  His  fur  is  one  of  the  recent  comers  to 
the  trade. 


142  THE  FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

Viscachas  and  Chinchillas 

In  Viscachas  and  Chinchillas  are  two  of  the  rarest,  ^finest  furs 
produced  in  South  America. 

The  demand  for  Chinchilla  runs  from  50,000  to  80,000  a  year, 
though  in  several  of  the  South  American  countries  to-day,  chin- 
chillas are  so  scarce  there  is  a  closed  season  for  some  years. 

The  Chinchilla  is  a  mouse  that  burrows.  He  has  short  squirrel- 
like front  legs  and  long  hind  legs  that  give  him  an  absurd  miniature 
kangaroo  look.  He  is  8  to  15  inches  long  with  a  long  tail  and 
feeds  on  his  hind  legs  like  a  squirrel.  His  fur  is  a  grayish  or  dark 
blue  slate  or  pearl.  It  is  soft  as  down  or  the  face  of  a  pansy  and 
almost  as  fragile.     In  Chile,  Bolivia  and  Peru  are  three  species. 

The  Viscacha  comes  from  the  same  habitat.  He  has  an  ab- 
surdly large  head  for  his  size,  a  round-ball  shaped  body,  thick  short 
hind  legs,  a  long  tail.  His  body  is  15  to  20  inches,  his  tail  8;  and 
his  gray  black  fur  is  the  ermine  of  South  America.  He  is  known 
under  the  ugly  name  of  Bastard  Chinchilla ;  and  the  trade  uses 
8000  of  his  velvet  pelts  a  year. 

Prices  for  both  these  furs  are  subject  to  wildest  variation  ac- 
cording to  quality.  In  New  York  in  1920,  1269  Chinchillas  sold 
for  from  $2,  $37,  and  ^41  to  $106.  The  Chinchilla  sold  in  St.  Louis 
spring  sales  exceeded  12,000;   In  London  13,200. 

The  Mole 

Allied  to  the  Chinchilla  in  the  fur  world  Is  the  mole,  whose 
fur  Is  described  in  another  section,  of  which  more  than  4,000,000  a 
year  are  used  In  European  trade  ;  but  as  each  mole  has  8  to  10  wives 
and  a  numerous  progeny,  even  that  demand  has  not  exhausted  the 
supply.  As  the  world  catch  of  mole  Is  rated  at  6,000,000  I  suppose 
2,000,000  may  be  ascribed  to  American  trade ;  but  I  do  not  vouch 
for  these  figures.  They  seem  to  me  far  too  small.  It  takes  600 
mole  skins  for  a  short  evening  wrap,  1000  for  a  long  wrap,  which 
would  give  barely  2000  moleskin  wraps  a  year  for  America,  with- 


THE  OTHER  GREAT  STAPLE   FURS  143 

out  any  count  of  the  enormous  consumption  of  mole  skins  for  gen- 
tlemen's waistcoats  and  vests,  which  was  the  original  use  to  which 
mole  skins  were  put  in  European  trade.  His  fur  has  been  compared 
to  plush,  but  it  is  more  perishable  and  more  velvety  than  any  plush 
ever  worn.  Moles  used  to  sell  at  i  to  2  pennies.  In  1920  Ameri- 
can sales,  they  brought  44^  for  bundles  and  in  Montreal  248,728 
sold.  In  New  York,  they  sold  at  2^.  to  39j!f  each  and  one  string 
of  3000  brought  the  high  price.  The  moles  sold  in  New  York 
were  1,211,692;  in  St.  Louis  2,250,000;  which  proves  what  I 
have  already  said  about  the  inaccuracy  of  trade  estimates  of 
the  moles  in  demand.  In  London  spring  sales,  2,000,000  moles 
were  sold. 

The  Squirrels 

In  the  class  of  fragile  furs  come  the  Squirrels,  the  grays  used 
undyed  for  evening  wraps  and  coats,  the  light-striped  yellows 
and  browns  both  dyed  and  undyed  for  linings,  often  the  side  and 
belly  furs  of  a  darker  pelt,  the  deep  brown  and  almost  brown  blacks 
from  Austria  dyed  and  undyed  for  linings  for  men's  coats  and  for 
cuffs  and  collars.  The  large,  dark-furred  squirrels  have  come  in 
the  past  from  Austria  and  German  sources.  It  was  in  the  dye  of 
these  that  Germany  excelled.  The  numbers  of  squirrels  sold  almost 
beggar  exaggeration.  Remembering  that  the  spring  sales  are  only 
one  of  three  sales  held  in  the  great  centres  each  year,  here  are  the 
figures:  New  York,  384,397;  London,  raw,  dyed  backs,  dressed 
skins,  sacks  and  tails,  793,300;  St.  Louis,  1,200,000.  Considering 
the  variations  in  quality,  prices  here  mean  little  unless  given 
with  the  grade,  but  in  New  York  prices  ran  from  5^  for  common 
and  poor  to  $2.25  for  best  grades.  Yet  there  were  gray  squirrels 
that  commanded  $10  to  $15.  This  would  look  like  the  end  of  the 
squirrel  as  a  fur  bearer  if  it  were  not  he  has  a  family  of  5  to  6  twice 
a  year.  Laws  of  which  an  account  is  given  in  the  Appendix  to  Part 
I  protect  gray  squirrel.  Practically,  there  are  many  sections  of 
the  country  in  which  no  laws  protect  the  red  squirrel,  or  the  little 


144  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

striped  squirrel,  which  Muir  has  described  as  the  happiest,  most 
pleasing  denizen  of  the  California  Sierras. 

Of  squirrels,  there  are  249  specimens  and  grades  in  America. 
His  range  is  from  Athabasca  to  Florida,  and  he  is  a  cousin  of  the 
whistling  marmot,  whose  pert  cry  comes  up  at  your  feet  in  the 
Rockies,  and  a  relative  of  the  gopher  squirrel,  whose  "yip"  surrounds 
you  on  the  prairie.  Gray  squirrel  is  always  called  a  natural  fur; 
because  like  fisher,  it  defies  dyeing.  All  the  squirrel  clan,  ground, 
mountain  and  tree,  are  noted  for  living  more  or  less  in  colonies  of 
from  40  to  1000.  All  can  be  tamed  into  ridiculously  intimate  human 
pets,  which  should  protect  them  from  depredation,  but  it  does  not. 
For  linings,  boas  and  whole-piece  garments,  the  European  trade 
uses  2,730,826  skins  a  year ;  and  multiplying  the  spring  sales  by 
three,  the  American  trade  must  use  even  more. 

The  Japanese  Flying  Squirrel  is  used  to  imitate  chinchilla  and 
while  trade  requirements  are  given  as  20,000  a  year,  this  is  ob- 
viously a  wild  guess,  for  in  the  spring  sales  only  of  1920,  almost 
5000  were  sold  in  New  York,  3300  in  London,  and  10,000  in  St. 

Louis. 

Ermine 

Though  the  Northern  Ermine  is  a  weasel  of  the  most  murder- 
ous, blood-thirsty  type,  his  little  pelt  ranks  with  the  rare  fragile 
furs.  I  have  described  him  fully  in  Part  H.  To  Elliot  Coues  must 
be  given  the  credit  for  the  best  description  of  ermine  in  the  fur 
world.  He  is  a  stoat,  called  by  the  trapper  a  weasel,  of  a  dirty 
brown  in  summer,  and  a  white  pure  as  snow  in  winter  except  for 
the  black  tip  to  his  tail,  which  is  the  one  thing  that  betrays  him  to 
his  enemies ;  or  rather  I  should  say  to  his  victims ;  for  with  his 
snaky  stealth,  his  trick  of  approaching  bird,  or  hare,  by  diving 
under  the  snow  and  coming  up  with  a  leap  on  the  brain  or  heart 
of  his  victim,  which  he  kills  with  one  stab  of  his  knitting-needle 
teeth  and  at  once  sucks  himself  full  of  the  warm  blood,  he  is  a  vicious 
little  hunter,  who  has  no  invulnerable  enemy  but  man.  He  is  five 
to  twelve  inches  long  with  a  fur  tail  four  inches  or  longer,  and  fur 


Mink. 


THE  OTHER  GREAT  STAPLE   FURS  145 

fine  as  swan's  down,  crisp  as  mink.  When  ermine  was  dotted  with 
black  spots,  it  was  known  as  the  miniver  of  royalty ;  but  with  the 
doffing  of  many  of  the  trappings  of  royalty  in  modern  life  —  except 
for  coronation  occasions  —  ermine  does  not  command  the  prices 
of  a  century  ago.  He  mates  with  several  wives  and  each  bears 
a  family  of  10  to  14  young.  Secure  in  his  snowy  habitat  of  the  Far 
North,  there  is  Httle  fear  of  his  extermination.  Like  death  and 
taxes,  the  ermine  we  shall  always  have  with  us. 

The  old  way  to  distinguish  ermine  from  white  baby  rabbit  was 
the  shading  of  sulphur  yellow  to  his  black  tail  tip  ;  but  this  has  been 
imitated  to  defy  detection  ;  and  I  should  say  the  best  way  to  detect 
imitation  ermine  to-day  is  that  rabbit  is  soft  and  silky,  ermine  is 
a  crisp,  thick  fur,  stubby  in  its  thickness  and  incapable  of  being 
stroked  the  wrong  way,  where  you  can  stroke  rabbit  and  cat  flat 
in  almost  any  direction.  The  fur  of  ermine,  though  soft  as  swan's 
down  in  the  young,  has  a  grain  and  lies  in  the  same  direction. 

Ermine  is  sold  in  bundles  of  10  to  50  and  used  to  command 
prices  of  20  shillings  to  40  shillings  a  bundle.  This  year,  it  brought 
prices  of  $1.85  to  ^1.50  a  skin,  going  low  as  161^  for  poor  skins, 
high  as  $3.50  for  good.  The  quantities  of  ermine  sold  in  1920  sales 
ran  295,000  in  St.  Louis;  200,000  in  London;  almost  74,000  in 
New  York ;  but  these  figures  are  not  enlightening ;  for  when  the 
price  goes  off  —  as  it  did  in  ermine  —  London  holds  the  best  furs 
off  the  market. 

Hare  and  Rabbit 

Hare  and  rabbit  are  among  the  furs  small  in  size  but  so  huge 
in  aggregates  that  they  stagger  calculation.  Hornaday  gives  the 
distinction  between  them  that  hares  are  long-eared,  long-legged  and 
lope ;  rabbits  are  short-eared,  short-legged  and  leap  or  jump  with 
a  thump ;  but  for  fur  purposes,  they  must  be  grouped  as  one. 

They  are  coming  along  in  quantities  to  swamp  markets ;  yet 
the  market  is  never  swamped ;  but  the  dye  houses  enlarge  depart- 
ments for  rabbit,  or  coney,  or  hare,  or  whatever  the  trade  calls  them. 
What  matter  if  they  sell  only  at  $1 .40  to  $3 . 1 5  a  pound  f   When  Eng- 


146  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

land  imports  82  to  90  million  skins  a  year,  and  Australia  exports 
40  to  50  millions,  and  Russia  uses  4  to  5  millions  a  year,  and  America 
9  to  12  millions,  and  Canada  can  sell  all  her  own  and  resell  12  million 
from  Australia,  one  begins  to  have  a  delirium  tremens  of  rabbit. 
One  would  not  have  to  do  much  figuring  to  prove  that  rabbits 
bring  more  money  to  the  fur  trade  than  seal  and  marten  and  sable 
combined.  It  may  be  called  the  poor  man's  fur ;  but  when  it  comes 
out  of  the  dye  works  as  seal,  ermine,  fox,  lynx,  it  also  becomes 
the  fur  of  the  rich ;  and  it  is  the  one  supply  of  fur  that  seems  ex- 
haustless.  But  rabbit  should  have  a  fur  deep  as  your  hand  is  wide ; 
but  that  means  nothing ;  for  the  dresser's  evening  machine  can  cut 
it  to  a  stub.  The  dye  can  be  told  from  the  color  of  the  under  skin ; 
and  the  fur  can  be  told  from  the  "catty  lick"  of  the  sheen.  Its 
gloster  does  not  last,  and  to  me,  rabbit  dyed  never  so  well  always 
lacks  lustre.  It  is  not  a  durable  fur ;  but  for  such  wear  as  requires 
a  low  price  for  careless  usage,  rabbit  will  always  remain  without  a 

peer. 

Red  Fox  and  Cross  Fox 

Of  the  fox  skins  used  in  the  fur  trade,  it  Is  very  hard  to  put 
down  classifications  that  conform  to  science.  Ten  years  ago,  the 
trade  would  have  called  black  and  silver  two  foxes.  To-day,  since 
the  fur  farming  of  foxes  in  Prince  Edward  Island,  black  and  silver 
are  one  and  the  same,  unless  black  fox  is  a  dyed  red  fox  of  poor  color 
or  an  Arctic  fox  of  some  defect  dyed.  Of  the  foxes  known  to  trade 
rated  as  to  price  to-day,  cross  fox,  blue  fox  and  Arctic  fox  come 
first.  Red  fox,  white  fox,  kit  fox  and  gray  come  lower  In  the  scale. 
The  world  output  of  fox  peltries  runs  from  1,600,000  to  2,000,000, 
of  which  three-quarters  are  reds.  The  best  foxes  come  from 
America,  and  the  best  In  America  from  Prince  Edward  Island, 
Alaska,  Labrador  and  the  North.  Europe  used  30,000  white  foxes 
a  year ;  America,  70,000  ;  and  Canada  easily  used  5000  Polar  foxes 
a  year. 

Science  describes  the  white  fox  as  an  Arctic  color  phase  of 
the  red,  though  old  French  trappers  will  tell  you  cross  fox  is  not 


THE  OTHER  GREAT  STAPLE   FURS  147 

called  cross  because  he  is  a  cross-breed,  but  because  his  markings 
of  darker  fur  down  his  back  and  across  his  shoulders  resemble  a 
cross. 

When  the  white  colored  fox  changes  his  pelt  to  spring  color, 
he  is  called  stone  fox;  but  science  recognizes  no  such  distinction. 
Nor  does  science  recognize  the  distinction  between  the  blue  fox  and 
the  Arctic.  Yet  on  the  fox  farms  of  the  Aleutians,  the  Arctic  foxes 
are  slaughtered  off  to  prevent  their  blood  spoiling  the  strains  of 
blue  fox  for  fur  fox.  All  are  known  to  science  as  color  phases  of  the 
Red  Fox  Family,  variegated  by  climate  and  habitat.  In  the  fur 
trade,  grades  vary  In  each  of  the  divisions,  silver,  cross,  blue,  Arctic, 
red,  white,  kitt  and  gray.  The  little  kitt  fox  is  the  gray  fox  of  Vir- 
ginia to  Arizona.  The  kitt  fox  Is  the  small  fellow  of  Pennsylvania 
and  the  Eastern  States.  The  red  ranges  In  value  as  to  habitat  from 
the  Rio  Grande  to  Alaska,  the  best  red  coming  from  the  North. 

As  shown  In  the  fur  sales  of  1920,  prices  follow  these  classifica- 
tions. London  fur  brokers  classified  foxes  as  silver,  cross,  red, 
white,  blue,  gray,  kitt.  Montreal  and  New  York  followed  the 
same  classification;  and  the  prices  ran  for  silver  fox  up  to  $1200; 
for  cross  from  $8g  to  $200 ;  for  best  red  from  $5  to  $50 ;  for  best 
white  from  $28  to  $yo ;  for  blue  from  $200  to  ^300 ;  and  in  the  four 
centres  of  the  great  sales,  these  prices  were  almost  uniform. 

What  constitutes  good  fox  has  been  given  in  the  section  on  fur 
farming ;  and  how  fox  furs  are  used  In  Imitation  Is  given  in  the  same 
chapter. 

At  time  of  writing  fox  is  the  most  popular  fur  in  the  world. 

Bear  and  Wolf 

The  same  difference  between  the  classifications  of  science  and 
the  fur  trade  come  in  Wolf  and  Bear. 

Here,  corresponding  to  foxes,  you  have  the  shaggy  gray  and 
brown  timber  wolf  at  the  head  of  the  list.  His  fur  Is  deeper  than 
fox  but  taken  when  he  is  young  and  in  prime  mid-winter  coat,  it 
can  be  dyed  for  silver  and  cross  fox ;   and  is  more  durable.     Comes 


148  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

next  the  Northern  wolf,  smaller  than  the  big  timber  wolf,  but  with 
a  silky  hair  that  can  be  bleached  or  dyed  to  imitate  blue  or  white 
fox,  with  a  tail  that  sells  for  best  boas.  At  the  foot  of  the  list  is 
the  coyote,  meanest  of  all  the  tribe,  a  skulker,  whose  brush  can  be 
dyed  for  boas. 

All  have  the  same  characteristics.  They  litter  5  to  6.  They 
hunt  in  packs.  They  prey  on  all  other  fur-bearing  animals.  They 
are  treacherous  to  their  own  kind  and  will  kill  a  mate,  or  disembowel 
their  own  young.  They  kill  for  the  lust  of  killing  and  are  as  great 
a  peril  to  stockmen's  herds  as  to  the  traps  of  the  hunter.  There 
is  no  closed  season  for  wolf  and  there  is  little  danger  to  human  life 
from  any  of  the  wolves  except  the  big  timber  wolf ;  and  that  danger 
is  so  great  it  is  only  denied  by  study  chair  naturalists.  The  largest 
specimen  of  any  timber  wolf  I  have  ever  seen  is  in  the  Government 
museum  of  Ottawa.  He  is  larger  than  any  Newfoundland  dog; 
and  in  my  early  days  at  Rat  Portage,  or  modern  Kenora,  before  it  i 

was  a  pleasure  resort  for  Winnipeg,  I  know  of  a  trapper's  skeleton 
being  found  with  nine  such  timber  wolves  skeletons  round  him  in  a 
circle,  which  tells  its  own  tale  of  what  happened.  Round  James' 
Bay  in  Labrador  and  from  Norway  House  to  Hudson  Bay,  such 
tragedies  are  not  uncommon,  though  the  victims  are  usually  children 
or  a  squaw,  who  has  been  benighted  on  the  trail.  I  recall  the  late 
Lord  Strathcona  telling  of  his  sensations  when  such  wolves  looked 
through  his  cabin  window  up  at  Battle  Harbor,  Labrador;  and  I 
know  a  Hudson's  Bay  chief  factor,  whose  family  was  followed  for 
hundreds  of  miles  along  Mackenzie  River,  when  they  were  coming 
out  by  dog  train  one  winter  when  rabbits  were  scarce  and  the  wolf 
packs  were  attracted  by  the  smell  of  the  frozen  fish  carried  to  feed 
the  dogs. 

The  sooner  wolves  are  exterminated,  the  better  for  all  other 
fur  bearers  ;  and  the  most  of  the  Provinces  and  Western  States  pay 
a  bounty  for  wolf  scalps.  It  used  to  be  a  bounty  for  wolf  tails  ;  but 
the  crafty  Northern  Indian  sometimes  brought  tails  from  which  the 
game  wardens  could  not  swear  the  wolves  had  been  killed. 


THE  OTHER  GREAT   STAPLE   FURS  149 

Wolf  pelts  sold  in  Montreal  this  year  from  $5  to  $45.  One 
timber  wolf  brought  $72 ;  another  unprime  brought  70^.  The 
total  of  wolves  sold  in  the  spring  sales  numbered  155,000  for  Europe 
and  America. 

Black  bear  make  the  best  fur.  Grizzly  bear  Is  the  king  in  size 
—  1 100  pounds  he  weighs  —  Polar  bear  come  next,  weighing  close 
to  800  pounds ;  and  others  are  known  as  brown  bear,  a  variation 
of  the  black ;  silver  tip,  a  variation  of  the  grizzly ;  and  white  bear, 
a  small  inland  variation  of  the  Polar.  White  bear  is  a  landlubber ; 
Polar,  a  sea  lover.  The  range  of  the  bear  is  from  the  Polar  Sea  to 
the  Rio  Grande ;   but  the  best  bear  fur  comes  from  the  North. 

Bear  has  commonly  2  cubs  a  litter  and  comes  to  maturity  in  the 
6th  or  7th  year.  I  think  the  largest  measurement  given  for  any 
bear  is  9  feet  for  Alaska  grizzly,  the  Polar  running  a  close  second 
at  7  to  8  feet.  White  inland  bear  and  black  bear  are  smaller ;  and 
their  fur  is  best  for  the  trade,  being  used  for  coats,  cuffs,  collars, 
trimmings.  The  coarser,  larger  bear  skins  are  sold  only  for  rugs 
and  robes.  There  is  an  estimate  given  that  the  trade  takes  a  million 
bear  a  year.  I  consider  the  figures  wild.  The  spring  sales  of  bear 
in  1920  did  not  exceed  10,000  for  Europe  and  America. 

The  'coon-like  opossum  is  known  to  every  boy  who  has  gone 
hunting  in  the  South.  It  measures  like  the  tree-climbing  'coon 
from  4  to  3  feet,  and  is  like  the  'coon  a  mottled  gray.  The  trade 
uses  600,000  opossum  in  fur  for  one  to  two  seasons.  The  price  is  not 
high,  nor  is  the  fur  a  high  grade.  It  is  warm  but  is  not  durable, 
and  is  used  chiefly  for  cheap  capes  and  trimmings  and  imitation  furs. 
Prices  ran  this  spring  from  $2  to  $4. 

Musk-ox  is  unlikely  to  come  into  the  fur  trade  except  as  a  robe ; 
for  it  is  strictly  protected  by  Canadian  law. 

Add  to  these  furs  the  leopard  and  lion  furs  of  Africa,  the  pony 
of  Russia,  the  goat  of  China  and  Tibet,  the  kangaroo  and  wallaby 
or  rock  kangaroo  of  Australia  ;  and  you  have  the  60  or  more  varieties 
of  marketable  fur  known  to  the  fur  trade. 

I  have  often  been  asked,  what  Is  the  average  catch  of  the  average 


ISO  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

trapper  in  the  North  worth  a  season  ?  If  I  had  been  asked  that  ten 
years  ago,  I  would  have  answered  instantly  from  $700  to  $iocxd; 
for  that  was  a  good  average  for  a  man  who  didn't  find  a  gold  mine 
of  silver  fox  or  marten.  To-day,  I  would  not  answer  that  ques- 
tion. Silver  fox  farmers  who  succeed,  muskrat  renters  who  go 
fifty-fifty  —  must  have  doubled  that  and  trebled  it  and  quadrupled 
it  in  1919.  But  prices  and  fashions  may  veer  as  the  wind  veers; 
and  I  answer  as  the  Mexicans  used  to  answer  me,  when  I  asked 
poHtical  questions  that  were  chancy  :  "Quien  sabe  ?" 


APPENDIX  TO  PART  I 

LAWS  OF  UNITED  STATES  AND  CANADIAN  PROVINCES  REVISED 
TO  DATE  ON  SEASONS  FOR  DIFFERENT  FURS.  LAWS  TO  PRE- 
SERVE GAME  — FUR  FARMS  — LICENSES  AND  ROYALTIES  TO 
GAME  WARDENS. 

LAWS  RELATING  TO  FUR-BEARING  ANIMALS,   1919. 

A   SUMMARY   OF    LAWS   IN  THE   UNITED    STATES,    CANADA,   AND   NEWFOUND- 
LAND, RELATING  TO  TRAPPING,  OPEN  SEASONS,  PROPAGATION,  AND  BOUNTIES. 

LEGISLATION    OF    I919. 

Twenty-nine  of  the  44  States  which  held  legislative  sessions  this  year 
enacted  laws  relative  to  fur-bearing  animals.  The  general  tendency  was 
to  increase  restrictions  and  afford  greater  protection  to  the  animals. 
Laws  fixing  State  seasons  on  fur  animals  were  enacted  in  Alabama,  Idaho, 
and  South  CaroHna,  and  trapping  Hcenses  were  prescribed  in  Alabama, 
Arizona,  Idaho,  Illinois,  Minnesota  (residents),  Nebraska,  Ohio,  and 
South  Carolina.  Details  of  the  more  important  new  laws  are  included  in 
the  following  summaries  under  States  and  Provinces. 

Alabama.  —  A  general  act  prescribes  a  close  season  on  beaver,  otter, 
bear,  fox,  raccoon,  opossum,  mink,  and  muskrat  from  March  i  to  October 
31,  requires  a  $10  trapping  license,  and  makes  it  unlawful  to  trap  on  the 
lands  of  another  without  written  permission.  Other  provisions  of  the  act 
permit  a  land  owner  to  protect  his  premises  from  the  depredations  of  fur 
animals,  and  to  trap  on  his  own  lands  during  the  open  season  without  a 
license. 

Arizona.  —  Beaver  are  protected  until  December  31,  1922;  a  license 
(fee,  $2.50)  is  required  of  persons  over  18  years  of  age  to  hunt  or  trap  fur  or 

151 


152  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

predatory  animals,  and  it  is  made  an  offence  to  disturb  or  remove  the  traps 
of  a  licensed  hunter  who  is  trapping  on  the  public  domain  or  under  permis- 
sion on  the  lands  of  another.  Fur  and  predatory  animals  may  be  kept, 
under  permit  from  State  game  warden,  for  propagation,  exhibition,  or  sale. 
Fur  and  predatory  animals  are  defined  as  mountain  lion,  bear,  wolf,  coyote, 
civet,  and  ring-tailed  cats,  leopard,  fox,  beaver,  otter,  badger,  fisher, 
skunk,  raccoon,  opossum,  mink,  marten,  weasel,  muskrat,  mole,  and  wood 
rat,  all  of  which,  except  beaver,  may  be  taken  at  any  time. 

Arkansas.  —  The  open  season  on  bears  is  fixed  as  November  lo  to 
January  15,  thus  lengthening  the  season  five  days.  State  hunting  licenses 
are  required  to  take  bears,  and  a  license  (fee,  $1.50)  is  prescribed  for  each 
dog  used  in  hunting  bears.  The  export  of  bears  is  prohibited,  except  that 
a  licensed  nonresident  under  affidavit  of  lawful  killing  may  take  out  one 
animal  if  not  for  sale. 

Connecticut.  —  The  season  on  raccoon  is  fixed  as  October  16  to  Janu- 
ary 31,  instead  of  October  16  to  February  28;  and  the  season  on  skunks 
is  closed  January  31  instead  of  April  30. 

Delaware.  —  Otter,  after  being  protected  at  all  seasons  for  several 
years,  may  now  be  taken  from  December  i  to  March  25  ;  the  season  on 
raccoon  and  opossum  is  closed  January  i  instead  of  February  15  ;  the  uni- 
form State  open  season  on  muskrat  is  made  from  December  i  to  March  10. 

Idaho.  —  Licenses  are  required  for  trapping  fur  animals  (fees,  resident, 
$5;  nonresident,  ^25;  alien,  $50).  An  open  season  from  October  i  to 
March  31  is  fixed  for  all  fur  animals  except  bear  —  beaver  and  otter  for- 
merly could  be  taken  under  a  permit  from  the  State  warden  only  when  in- 
juring property.  Bear  and  predatory  animals,  including  mountain  lion, 
wolf,  coyote,  lynx,  bobcat,  jack  rabbit,  skunk,  and  weasel,  may  be 
killed  at  any  time.  Provision  is  made  for  the  issuance  of  permits  by  the 
State  warden  to  persons  desiring  to  raise  fur  animals.  In  captivity. 

Illinois. — The  period  from  November  i  to  March  15  is  prescribed  as 
the  open  season  for  fur  animals,  including  foxes,  which  formerly  were  un- 
protected. Possession  of  green  hides  is  prohibited  except  during  the  open 
season  and  the  first  10  days  thereafter.  Trapping  licenses  are  required 
(fees,  resident,  $1  ;  nonresident,  $10.50). 

Maine.  —  A  special  license  (fee,  $25)  Is  required  to  take  beaver  in  such 
territory  as  may  be  opened  to  beaver  trapping  by  the  commissioner.  The 
fee  for  a  general  license  to  trap  in  unorganized  townships  is  increased 


APPENDIX  TO  PART  I  153 

from  ^5  to  $10,  but  bears  and  bobcats  may  now  be  taken  without  a  license. 
It  is  unlawful  to  transport  or  dispose  of  a  beaver  hide  unless  an  official 
seal  of  the  commissioner  has  been  attached  thereto.  The  bounty  on 
bobcat  and  Canada  lynx  is  increased  from  $4.  to  $10. 

Massachusetts.  —  A  close  season  from  January  i  to  September  30 
is  prescribed  for  raccoon. 

Michigan.  —  The  period  during  which  beaver  may  be  taken  under  a 
special  license  is  fixed  as  November  i  to  April  15,  thus  shortening  the  sea- 
son one  month.  The  season  on  otter,  mink,  fisher,  and  marten  is  shortened 
one  month  by  closing  February  15  instead  of  March  15.  October  15  to 
December  31  is  prescribed  as  the  open  season  on  raccoons,  and  October  16 
to  April  14  north  of  Range  20,  and  December  16  to  March  31  south  of 
Range  21,  on  muskrats  instead  of  the  former  State  season  from  November 
16  to  March  14.  Badger,  beaver,  and  muskrat  are  protected  at  all  times 
in  and  within  2  miles  of  any  city  public  park  containing  over  200  acres  of 
which  150  acres  or  more  is  woodland. 

Minnesota.  —  The  law  relating  to  fur  animals  is  amended  generally  in 
the  act  revising  the  game  laws.  Raccoon,  fisher,  and  marten,  formerly 
unprotected,  are  included  in  the  list  of  fur  animals  for  which  close  sea- 
sons are  prescribed.  The  period  from  December  i  to  April  i  is  fixed  as 
the  open  season  on  mink  and  muskrat,  thus  shortening  the  season  two  weeks. 
Protection  is  removed  from  black  bear.  Nonresidents  are  prohibited 
from  trapping,  but  residents  may  trap  under  a  $1  license.  The  commis- 
sioner may  issue  licenses  (fee,  $1 ;  bond,  $500)  to  trap  a  limited  number  of 
beaver,  and  the  skins  of  such  beaver  when  tagged  (fee,  $3)  may  be  bought, 
sold,  or  transported  at  any  time.  State  bounties,  wolf,  $7.50;  cub  wolf, 
$3,  were  prescribed. 

Missouri.  —  The  period  from  November  i  to  January  31  is  fixed  as 
the  open  season  on  fur  animals  instead  of  December  i  to  February  i. 
A  license  (fee,  $5)  is  required  to  breed  fur  animals. 

Montana.  — A  close  season  from  May  i  to  September  14  is  prescribed 
for  marten  and  a  special  license  (fee,  $1)  is  required  to  trap  them. 

Nebraska.  —  Trapping  licenses  are  prescribed  (fees,  resident,  $2 ; 
nonresident  or  alien,  $10).  The  former  season  of  November  i  to  Feb- 
ruary 15  on  fur  animals  is  changed  to  November  20  to  March  20  on  musk- 
rat,  opossum,  and  otter ;  September  20  to  March  20  on  raccoon  and  skunk 
(skunk  formerly  unprotected) ;   and  December  i  to  January  31,  on  mink. 


154  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

New  Hampshire.  —  A  special  season  from  November  i  to  March  3 1 
is  prescribed  for  muskrats  on  the  Connecticut  River. 

New  Jersey.  —  It  is  now  unlawful  to  take  skunk,  mink,  or  otter  in  any 
manner  except  by  trap.  The  months  of  April  and  May  are  included  in 
the  period  during  which  foxes  may  be  hunted  under  permit  from  the 
board  of  game  commissioners. 

New  York.  —  Raccoons  may  now  be  taken  in  Catskill  Park  from  Octo- 
ber I  to  March  15  in  any  manner  except  by  trapping,  and  they  may  be 
taken  in  the  rest  of  the  State  from  November  10  to  February  10  in  any 
manner.     Skunks  may  not  be  hunted,  pursued,  or  killed  by  aid  of  dogs. 

North  Dakota.  —  The  fee  for  a  resident  trapping  license  is  increased 
from  $1  to  $2.  Mink,  muskrat,  skunk,  and  raccoon  may  be  raised  in 
domestication  under  a  $5  breeder's  license,  and  wild  fur  animals  may 
be  taken  at  any  time  for  breeding  purposes  under  permit  and  $500  bond< 
Otters  are  protected  indefinitely. 

Ohio.  —  Licenses  to  trap  fur  animals  required  (fees,  resident,  $1  ,* 
nonresident,  $15).  It  is  unlawful  to  destroy  the  house,  den,  or  burrow  of 
any  fur  animal.  The  former  season  of  November  15  to  February  i  is 
changed  to  December  i  to  March  i  on  muskrats,  and  to  November  i  to 
February  i  on  raccoon,  mink,  skunk,  and  opossum.  The  period  from  Oc- 
tober 2  to  January  i  is  fixed  as  the  open  season  on  foxes  instead  of  October  2 
to  January  9. 

Pennsylvania.  —  The  bounty  on  wildcats  is  increased  from  $6  to  $8, 
and  on  weasels  from  $i  to  $2. 

Rhode  Island.  —  The  period  from  November  i  to  February  i,  instead 
of  November  i  to  April  15,  is  fixed  as  the  open  season  on  raccoon. 

South  Carolina.  —  Hunting  licenses  are  required  to  take  fur  animals. 
State  open  seasons  from  October  i  to  March  15  on  bear,  mink,  muskrat, 
opossum,  otter,  raccoon,  and  skunk,  and  from  October  i  to  February  15 
on  foxes  are  prescribed  in  lieu  of  local  protection  in  a  few  counties. 

South  Dakota.  —  The  age  limit  for  persons  not  requiring  trapping 
licenses  is  reduced  from  18  to  14  years.  The  fee  for  a  nonresident  trapping 
license  is  increased  from  $\o  to  $25.  It  is  made  unlawful  for  one  person 
to  set  or  operate  more  than  75  traps  at  one  time.  Otter  and  beaver  are 
protected  indefinitely,  and  the  open  season  on  mink,  skunk  (formerly  un- 
protected), and  muskrat  is  shortened  one  month  by  being  fixed  from  noon 
December  i  to  noon  March  i. 


APPENDIX  TO  PART  I  155 

Utah.  —  Marten  are  protected  indefinitely.  Possession  of  skins  of 
protected  fur  animals  is  prohibited,  unless  duly  tagged  by  commissioner. 
Fifty  per  cent  of  the  proceeds  from  the  sale  of  hides  of  beaver  taken  under 
permit  must  be  paid  by  commissioner  to  trappers  as  compensation  for 
trapping  the  animals.  Formerly  all  the  proceeds  of  such  sales  were 
converted  into  the  State  game  fund.  Bounties  are  increased,  on  wolf,  from 
$50  to  $62.50;  on  bear  and  mountain  lion  or  cougar,  from  $25  to  $30; 
on  coyote,  from  $2.50  to  $4. ;  and  on  lynx  or  bobcat,  from  $2.50  to  $3. 

Vermont.  —  A  $10  bounty  is  prescribed  for  black  bear  taken  in  the 
State  between  May  i  and  November  i. 

Washington.  — A  breeder's  license  (fee,  $10;  renewal,  $5)  is  required 
to  raise  fur  animals  in  captivity. 

West  Virginia.  —  The  open  season  on  red  fox,  raccoon,  mink,  and  musk- 
rat,  the  only  fur  animals  protected,  is  made  November  i  to  February  i 
instead  of  November  i  to  December  31. 

Wisconsin.  —  The  open  season  on  beaver  in  Price,  Rusk,  and  Sawyer 
Counties  is  changed  from  the  month  of  December  to  the  months  of  February 
and  March.  The  season  on  raccoon  in  Marathon  County  is  fixed  as  August 
15  to  January  i.  The  season  on  muskrats  in  Calumet,  Manitowoc,  and 
Sheboygan  Counties  is  fixed  as  March  i  to  April  15. 

Wyoming.  — A  license  (fee,  $1)  is  required  for  each  dog  used  in  hunt- 
ing predatory  animals  on  national  forest  during  the  close  season  for  big 
game,  and  the  fee  for  a  permit  to  hunt  predatory  animals  is  reduced  from 
$5  to  $3.     Continuous  protection  on  beaver  is  extended  to  1925. 

Manitoba.  —  The  fee  for  resident  trapping  licenses  is  increased  from 
50  cents  to  $2,  and  for  resident  fur-trading  licenses  from  $5  to  $10.  Fur 
traders  were  allowed  until  September  30  to  file  a  report  on  their  dealings. 

New  Brunswick.  —  Continuous  protection  on  beaver  and  sable  was 
extended  to  July  i,  1920. 

Saskatchewan.  —  The  period  from  December  i  to  April  30  is  fixed  as 
the  open  season  on  beaver  throughout  the  Province  (formerly  beaver 
were  protected  throughout  the  year  south  of  Churchill  River  and  the  sea- 
son north  of  that  river  was  from  November  i  to  April  30).  The  lieutenant 
governor  in  council  may  prohibit  the  killing  of  beaver  in  any  municipality. 
The  bounty  on  timber  wolves  is  increased  from  $5  to  $10. 

Yukon.  —  It  is  made  unlawful  to  export  raw  furs  except  under  permit 
issued  by  the  commissioner  and  upon  payment  of  an  export  tax. 


156  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

Federal  Laws. 

Two  Federal  laws  have  a  bearing  on  the  fur  industry  of  the  United 
States  —  the  Lacey  Act,  governing  interstate  commerce  in  game,  and  the 
tariff  act  of  October  3,  1913. 

That  part  of  the  Lacey  Act  codified  as  section  242  of  the  Criminal 
Code  (35  Stat.  1 137)  makes  it  unlawful  to  ship  or  transport  "from  any 
State,  Territory,  or  District  of  the  United  States,  to  any  other  State,  Terri- 
tory, or  District  thereof  "  the  bodies  or  parts  of  bodies  of  any  wild  animal 
or  bird  killed  or  shipped  in  violation  of  law  of  the  State,  Territory,  or  Dis- 
trict in  which  the  same  were  killed  or  from  which  they  were  shipped.  This 
makes  it  unlawful  to  ship  out  of  any  State  skins  or  pelts  illegally  taken  or 
shipped.  Section  243  of  the  Criminal  Code  requires  packages  containing 
furs,  when  shipped  in  interstate  commerce,  to  be  plainly  marked,  so  that 
the  name  and  address  of  the  shipper  and  the  nature  of  the  contents  may  be 
readily  ascertained  by  inspection  of  the  outside  of  the  package. 

The  tariff  act  of  191 3  places  a  duty  of  10  per  cent  ad  valorem  on  live 
animals  shipped  into  the  United  States.  Paragraph  397  of  this  act  places 
on  the  free  list  animals  imported  for  breeding  purposes  by  a  citizen  of  the 
United  States :  "  Provided,  That  no  such  animal  shall  be  admitted  free 
unless  pure-bred  of  a  recognized  breed  and  duly  registered  in  a  book  of 
record  recognized  by  the  Secretary  of  Agriculture  for  that  breed."  This 
act  has  made  it  impossible  thus  far  to  admit  free  of  duty  any  foxes  or  other 
Canadian  fur  animals  for  propagation.  Raw  furs  not  advanced  in  manu- 
facture are  admitted  free  of  duty. 

Laws  of  States  and  Provinces. 

The  following  is  a  summary  by  States  and  Provinces  of  trapping 
regulations  now  in  force,  open  season  for  taking  fur  animals,  provisions 
relating  to  their  propagation  and  possession,  and  to  bounties  offered  for 
the  destruction  of  predatory  species,  or  those  considered  harmful. 

The  laws  relating  to  deer  and  other  big  game,  rabbits,  and  squirrels 
are  not  considered  here,  as  they  appear  in  the  annual  game-law  bulletin.^ 

Laws  relating  to  bears  are  included,  mainly  because  of  their  connec- 
tion with  bounties.  The  bounty  laws  included  relate  to  all  animals  on 
which  bounty  is  paid. 

^  Farmers'  Bulletin  1077,  "Game  Laws  for  1919." 


APPENDIX  TO  PART  I  157 

Under  the  heading  "  Open  seasons  "  the  dates  given  are,  unless  other- 
wise stated,  the  first  and  last  days  of  the  open  season. 

Under  the  heading  "  Trapping "  the  expression  "  no  legislation  " 
indicates  that  no  specific  trapping  provisions  exist,  the  general  trespass 
laws  of  the  State  not  having  been  considered. 

ALABAMA. 

Open  seasons.  —  Beaver,  otter,  bear,  fox,  raccoon,  opossum,  mink,  and  muskrat 
may  be  trapped  from  November  i  to  March  i ;  opossums  may  be  hunted  with  dog 
or  gun  from  October  15  to  March  I. 

Possession  of  opossum  and  the  young  of  protected  fur  animals  during  close  sea- 
son prohibited.  Owner  may  protect  premises  in  any  manner  at  any  time  from 
depredations  of  fur  animals. 

Trapping.  —  Trapping  license  (good  during  trapping  season)  required  (fee, 
$10) ;  issued  by  probate  judge.  Owners,  tenants,  and  members  of  families  may 
trap  on  own  land  during  open  season  without  license.  Unlawful  to  trap  on  lands 
of  another  without  written  permission  from  owner  or  agent.  Poisons,  drugs,  or 
chemicals  may  not  be  used  in  taking  game  or  fur  animals. 

Propagation.  —  No  legislation. 

Bounties.  —  None  paid. 

ALASKA. 

Open  seasons.  —  Land  otter  and  mink,  November  16  to  March  31;  fox  and 
weasel,  November  16  to  March  14;  muskrat,  December  i  to  May  31 ;  lynx  (wild- 
cat), November  16  to  February  29.  No  close  season  for  black  bear,  wolf,  wolverine, 
ground  squirrel,  or  rabbit.^  Close  season  on  marten  until  November  15,  1921 ; 
on  sea  otter  until  November  i,  1920;  on  beaver  until  November  i,  1923.  No 
open  season  in  Aleutian  Islands  Reservation,  where  trapping  may  be  done  only  by 
special  permit.^ 

Trapping.  —  The  Secretary  of  Commerce  makes  all  regulations  for  taking  fur 
animals  in  Alaska.  Under  regulations  published  March  16,  1918,  it  is  unlawful 
to  use  a  "klips"  trap,  a  steel  bear  trap,  or  any  trap  having  a  spread  exceeding  8 
inches ;  to  kill  fur-bearing  animals  with  strychnin  or  other  poison ;  to  trap  protected 
fur  animals  at  any  time  when  the  skin  or  pelt  is  not  prime ;  or  to  have  in  possession 
or  sell  or  export  unprime  skins  of  animals  protected  by  close  seasons  (such  skins 

^  South  of  latitude  62°.  —  Open  season  for  brown  bear,  October  to  July  i ;  walrus  and  sea 
lions,  no  open  season.  North  of  latitude  62°.  —  Open  season  for  walrus  and  sea  lions,  August  i 
to  December  10;  limit,  i  each  a  season;  no  close  season  for  brown  bear  or  sea  lion. 

*  The  fur-seal  fisheries,  the  Aleutian  Islands  Reservation,  and  the  Afognak  Reservation 
are  subject  to  special  legislative  and  administrative  control.  For  specific  information  regard- 
ing them,  application  should  be  made  to  the  Commissioner  of  Fisheries,  Washington,  D.C, 


iS8  THE  FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

subject  to  confiscation).  Shipments  of  furs  must  be  reported  to  the  Bureau  of 
Fisheries,  Department  of  Commerce,  on  blanks  provided  for  that  purpose. 

Propagation.  —  Owners  of  establishments  for  breeding  fur  animals  are  subject 
to  the  same  restrictions  as  to  season  for  killing  and  condition  of  pelts  as  are  trappers 
of  wild  fur-bearing  animals.  Fur  farmers  are  required  to  furnish  reports  to  the 
Bureau  of  Fisheries  and  to  allow  agents  of  that  bureau  free  access  to  establishments 
where  aninals  are  kept  in  captivity. 

Within  the  Aleutian  Islands  Reservation  the  Department  of  Agriculture 
grants  permits  to  propagate  fur  animals  and  to  trap  them  for  breeding  purposes. 

An  act  of  the  territorial  legislature  protects  premises  of  fox  breeders  or  breeders 
of  other  fur  animals  from  trespass. 

Bounties.  —  Wolf,  $15 ;  eagles,  50  cents. 

ARIZONA. 

open  seasons.  —  Beaver  protected  until  December  31,  1922.  No  close  season 
on  other  fur  and  predatory  animals. 

Trapping.  —  State  trapping  license  (fee,  $2.50)  required  of  persons  over  i8 
years  of  age  to  hunt  or  trap  fur  and  predatory  animals.  Issued  by  warden,  desig- 
nated deputies,  and  clerks  of  boards  of  supervisors.  License  not  required  for 
trapping  on  own  land.  Predatory  and  fur  animals  defined  as  mountain  lion,  bear, 
wolf,  coyote,  civet  and  ring-tailed  cats,  leopard,  fox,  beaver,  otter,  badger,  fisher, 
skunk,  raccoon,  opossum,  mink,  marten,  weasel,  muskrat,  mole,  and  wood  rat. 
Unlawful  to  disturb  or  remove  the  traps  of  a  licensed  trapper  who  is  trapping  on  the 
public  domain  or  on  lands  for  which  he  has  permission  to  trap.  Unlawful  to  use 
fish  or  the  flesh  of  any  game  bird  or  animal  for  trap  bait.  Owner  may  protect 
his  premises  from  the  depredations  of  predatory  and  fur  animals  at  any  time. 
Mountain  lion,  wolf,  fox,  coyote,  lynx,  wildcat,  skunk,  or  other  obnoxious  animal  may 
be  taken  on  State  game  preserves  only  under  regulations  of  the  State  game  warden. 

Propagation.  —  Under  permit  from  State  game  warden,  fur-bearing  and  preda- 
tory animals  may  be  kept  for  propagation,  exhibition,  or  sale. 

Bounties.  —  County  boards  are  required  to  pay  for  wolf  or  mountain  lion, 
$10  each;  and  may  pay  for  coyote,  $2;  lynx  or  wildcat,  $1;  raccoon,  25  cents; 
jack  rabbit,  gopher,  or  prairie  dog,  5  cents. 

ARKANSAS. 

open  seasons.  —  All  fur  animals,  except  beaver,  otter,  and  bear,  October  i 
to  February  29;  bear,  November  10  to  January  15  (limit,  one  a  season);  beaver 
and  otter,  no  open  season  before  January  I,  1922.  Raw  skins  of  fur  animals  may 
not  be  possessed  or  sold,  except  between  October  I  and  March  15.  Fur  animals 
found  destroying  crops  or  poultry  may  be  killed  at  any  time. 


APPENDIX  TO  PART  I  159 

Trapping.  —  A  person  using  I2  or  more  traps  to  take  fur  animals  is  required  to 
secure  an  annual  trapper's  license  (fee,  $20).  Unlawful  to  trap  bears,  to  hunt 
them  at  night  with  torch  or  searchlight,  or  to  sell  or  exchange  them;  export  is 
prohibited  except  by  nonresident  licensee  under  affidavit  that  the  bear  was  legally 
taken  and  is  not  for  sale.  Hunting  license  required  to  kill  bears.  Fee,  resident, 
$1.10;  nonresident,  $15;   dog,  used  in  hunting  bears,  $1.50. 

Propagation.  —  The  game  and  fish  commission  is  authorized  to  issue  permits 
to  breeders  of  game  and  fur  animals  under  such  regulations  as  it  may  prescribe. 

Bounties.  —  County  courts  may  offer  bounty  on  wolf,  wildcat,  or  panther,  and 
fix  the  amount  of  such  bounty. 

CALIFORNIA. 

open  seasons.  —  No  open  season  for  beaver  or  sea  otter.  Open  season  for 
black  or  brown  bear,  ring-tail  cat,  coon,  pine  marten,  fisher,  wolverine,  mink, 
skunk,  river  otter,  and  fox,  October  15  to  February  29.  Seals  and  sea  lions  are 
protected  at  all  times  in  game  district  19. 

Trapping.  —  Trapping  license :  citizen  of  United  States,  fee,  ^i ;  alien,  $2. 
License  issued  free  to  trappers  18  years  old  or  under.  Licensed  trappers,  except 
those  18  or  under,  are  required  to  report  catch  before  July  i.  Fur  animals  may  be 
killed  at  any  time  when  destroying  property.  Unlawful  to  use  poisons  in  taking 
fur  animals  or  to  dig  or  smoke  out  skunks  from  dens.  Use  of  gun  larger  than  No. 
10  gauge  prohibited. 

Propagation.  —  No  legislation. 

Bounties.  —  Mountain  lion,  female  ^30 ;  male,  $20 ;  paid  by  State  game  com- 
mission. Boards  of  supervisors  of  counties  may  at  their  discretion  fix  the  rate  and 
pay  bounty  on  coyote,  wildcat,  lynx,  bear,  or  mountain  lion.  Many  counties  now 
pay  a  bounty  on  some  of  these  animals,  especially  on  coyotes.^ 

COLORADO. 

Open  seasons.  —  No  close  season  for  fur  animals,  except  beaver. 

Trapping.  —  Hunting  license  required  for  trapping ;  fee,  resident,  $2 ;  non- 
resident, $25.  Beavers  may  not  be  trapped  for  fur  at  any  time,  but  the  owner  of 
property  damaged  by  the  animals  may  apply  to  the  State  game  and  fish  com- 
missioner for  a  permit  to  kill  them  under  such  regulations  as  he  may  provide  as 
to  the  disposition  of  the  skins. 

Propagation.  —  No  restrictions,  except  as  to  beaver  and  game  animals. 

*  For  information  in  regard  to  bounties  in  any  county,  application  should  be  made  to  the 
county  clerk. 


i6o  THE  FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

Bounties.  —  None  paid  by  State  since  1895.  On  petition  of  50  freeholders, 
county  commissioners  may  levy  a  tax  to  pay  a  bounty  on  coyote,  wolf,  and  moun- 
tain lion. 

COimECTICUT. 

Open  seasons. — Otter,  November  i  to  March  31;  raccoon,  October  16  to 
January  31,  but  landowner  may  kill  the  animals  at  any  time  to  protect  property; 
skunk,  November  i  to  January  31 ;  may  be  taken  at  any  time  to  protect  property. 
No  close  season  on  other  fur  animals. 

Trapping.  —  Unlawful  to  trap  with  scented  baits ;  to  trap  on  lands  of  another 
without  permission;  and  to  take  animals  with  a  snare  or  similar  device.  Traps 
must  be  visited  at  least  once  in  48  hours  and  must  not  be  set  in  path,  wood  road, 
or  specially  prepared  furrow.  Hunting  license  is  required  for  trapping  (except  of 
a  resident  on  own  land);  fee,  resident,  $1 ;  nonresident,  ^10;  alien,  ^15;  with  an 
additional  25  cents  recording  fee  for  each  license.  Persons  under  16  years  of  age, 
while  denied  a  hunting  license,  may  obtain  one  for  taking  fur  animals  only. 

Propagation.  —  No  restrictions  on  possession  or  sale  of  fur  animals  kept  in 
captivity. 

Bounties.  —  Towns  are  permitted  to  pay  bounty  on  wildcat  or  fox  (not  over 
$S) ;  on  weasel,  woodchuck,  wild  Belgian  hare,  or  wild  German  rabbit  (not  over  $1). 

DELAWARE. 

Open  seasons.  —  Skunk,  mink,  and  otter,  December  i  to  March  25 ;  fox, 
October  i  to  April  30;  raccoon  and  opossum,  October  i  to  January  i ;  muskrat, 
December  i  to  March  10. 

Trapping.  —  Nonresident  trappers  are  required  to  hold  hunting  license  (fee, 
$10.50).  Unlawful  to  use  pitfall,  deadfall,  scaffold,  cage,  snare,  trap,  net,  pen, 
baited  hook,  or  baited  field  or  any  other  similar  device,  or  any  drug,  poison, 
chemicals,  or  explosives  for  taking  birds  or  animals  protected  by  the  laws  of  this 
State,  except  muskrats,  skunks,  minks,  and  otters,  and  except  as  otherwise  ex- 
pressly provided.  Traps  or  other  devices  unlawfully  set  are  subject  to  confiscation. 
Muskrats  may  not  be  taken  during  the  time  of  any  flood  or  freshet  when  such 
flood  or  freshet  may  cause  them  to  leave  their  usual  places  of  shelter  and  protection. 
Muskrats  may  not  be  shot  at  night  or  hunted  with  a  dog.  Unlawful  to  destroy 
the  nest,  den,  or  lair  of  any  animal  protected  by  law.  Unlawful  to  hunt,  kill,  take, 
or  destroy  any  protected  animal,  except  muskrat,  skunk,  mink,  and  otter,  while 
the  ground  is  covered  with  snow.  Unlawful  to  shoot  at  or  destroy  any  fox  while 
such  fox  is  being  chased  by  dog  or  dogs.  Unlawful  to  sell  or  export  any  fox  or  fox 
hides.  Owners  of  property  may  at  any  time  destroy  fur-bearing  animalsjto  protect 
such  property.  *  ' 


APPENDIX  TO  PART   I  i6i 

Propagation.  —  No  restrictions,  provided  a  permit  is  obtained  from  the  chief 
game  and  fish  warden  (fee,  ^i).  A  restricted  number  of  wild  fur  or  game  animals 
for  propagating  purposes  may  be  taken  under  permit. 

Bounties.  —  None  paid. 

DISTRICT  OF  COLUMBIA. 

No  legislation  relating  to  fur  animals. 

FLORIDA. 

open  seasons.  —  Beaver  and  otter,  November  I  to  January  31.    No  close 
season  for  other  fur  animals. 
Trapping.  —  No  legislation. 
Propagation.  —  No  legislation. 
Bounties.  —  None  paid. 

GEORGIA. 

Open  seasons.  —  Opossum,  October  i  to  February  29 ;  fox,  Habersham  County, 
September  i  to  May  14.     Fur  animals  not  otherwise  protected. 

Trapping.  —  Permission  of  owner  required  to  trap  on  lands  of  another.  Hunt- 
ing license  required  to  trap  outside  one's  own  militia  district ;  fees  for  State  license, 
nonresident,  $15;  resident,  $3;  county  Hcense,  $1. 

Propagation.  —  No  restrictions  on  propagation  of  unprotected  fur  animals. 

Bounties.  —  None  paid. 

HAWAII. 

Hawaii  has  no  wild  animals  valuable  for  fur.  There  are  no  restrictions  on  the 
propagation  of  fur  animals,  except  that  mongooses  and  rabbits  may  not  be  kept 
or  bred.     Pet  rabbits  may  be  raised,  if  kept  in  confinement. 

IDAHO. 

Open  seasons.  —  Beaver,  otter,  marten,  mink,  muskrat,  raccoon,  fox,  and  fisher, 
October  i  to  March  31;  bear  unprotected.  Predatory  animals  —  mountain  lion, 
wolf,  coyote,  lynx,  bobcat,  jack  rabbit,  skunk,  and  weasel,  unprotected. 

In  Black  Lake  Game  Preserve,  beaver,  otter,  marten,  fisher,  fox,  mink,  and 
wolverine  are  protected  at  all  times;  mountain  lion,  bear,  lynx,  wolf,  coyote,  and 
wildcat  may  be  destroyed  by  game  warden  or  duly  authorized  persons. 

In  Payette  Game  Preserve,  bear,  lynx,  wolverine,  fox,  otter,  beaver,  marten, 
mink,  and  fisher  are  protected  at  all  times;  mountain  lion,  timber  wolf,  coyote, 
and  wildcat  may  be  killed  by  game  wardens  or  duly  authorized  persons. 


i62  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

In  Selway  and  Big  Lost  River  Game  Preserves,  beaver,  otter,  marten,  fisher, 
fox,  and  mink  are  protected  at  all  times ;  mountain  lion,  bear,  lynx,  wolf,  coyote, 
wolverine,  and  wildcat  may  be  killed  by  game  wardens  or  duly  authorized  persons. 
In  Big  Lost  River  Preserve,  badgers,  weasels,  skunks,  and  rabbits  may  be  killed  by 
anyone  without  permit. 

In  Big  Creek  Game  Preserve,  beaver,  otter,  marten,  fisher,  fox,  and  mink  are 
protected  at  all  times;  mountain  lion,  lynx,  timber  wolf,  coyote,  and  wildcat  may 
be  killed  by  game  wardens  or  duly  authorized  persons. 

Trapping.  —  License  required  to  trap  fur-bearing  animals :  Resident,  $5 ; 
nonresident,  $25 ;  alien,  $50.  Issued  by  warden,  deputy,  or  authorized  agent. 
Licensed  trapper  must  make  verified  report  at  end  of  season  of  number  and  kind 
of  fur  caught,  where  sold,  and  the  price  received  therefor.  Skins  of  fur  or  other 
animals  legally  taken,  within  or  without  State,  may  be  possessed  or  sold  at  any  time. 
Unlawful  to  destroy,  disturb,  or  remove  traps  of  licensed  trapper.  Unlawful  to 
use  flesh  of  any  game  bird  or  game  animal  for  bait  in  trapping  or  taking  fur-bearing 
animals.  Muskrats  may  be  destroyed  in  irrigated  districts,  but  muskrat  houses 
may  not  be  disturbed  except  under  permit  of  State  warden  to  protect  private  or 
public  ditch  or  water  course.  Person  may  protect  own  premises  from  depredation 
of  fur-bearing  animals,  under  permit  from  State  warden. 

Propagation.  —  Permit  from  State  warden  required.  Permittee  must  make 
verified  yearly  report  showing  number  of  animals  kept  in  captivity,  number  sold, 
and  number  on  hand. 

Bounties.  —  Coyote,  lynx,  or  wildcat,  ^2.50  each;  bear  or  wolf,  $10;  moun- 
tain lion,  $25 ;  paid  from  predatory  wild  animal  funds  administered  through  the 
State  live  stock  sanitary  board.  Bounty  of  2  cents  each  on  pocket  gopher,  ground 
squirrel,  and  prairie  dog ;  fund  raised  by  taxation ;  administered  like  predatory  wild 
animal  fund. 

ILLINOIS. 

Open  seasons.  —  Raccoon,  mink,  muskrat,  skunk,  opossum,  fox,  and  otter, 
November  i  to  March  15.  Possession  of  green  hides  of  fur-bearing  animals  pro- 
hibited except  from  November  i  to  March  25. 

Trapping.  —  License  required  to  trap  fur-bearing  animals :  Resident,  $1 ; 
nonresident,  $10.50.  Issued  by  county,  city,  or  village  clerk.  Expires  March  15. 
Licenses  not  required  of  landowners  and  tenants  and  members  of  families  to  trap 
during  open  season  on  the  lands  on  which  they  reside.  License  not  issued  to  per- 
son under  16  years  of  age  without  written  consent  of  parent  or  guardian. 

Holder  of  a  license,  within  30  days  after  its  expiration,  must  report  all  hides  of 
fur-bearing  animals  taken,  sold,  shipped,  or  dealt  in,  together  with  names  and 
addresses  of  persons  to  whom  sold  or  shipped. 


APPENDIX  TO  PART  I  163 

Unlawful  to  use  spear  or  similar  device  for  hunting  or  taking  fur-bearing 
animals,  or  explosives,  chemicals,  or  mechanical  devices  or  smokers  of  any  kind 
to  drive  them  out  of  their  burrows,  dens,  or  houses.  Houses  and  dens  of  fur- 
bearing  animals  protected  except  when  they  obstruct  a  public  or  private  ditch  or 
^  watercourse.  Use  of  automobile  or  vehicle  propelled  by  mechanical  power,  or  the 
lights  thereof,  or  ferret  in  hunting  or  taking  fur-bearing  animal  prohibited.  Un- 
lawful to  trap  on  lands  of  another  without  permission  from  owner,  agent,  or  occu- 
pant. 

Propagation.  —  Permit  is  required  to  conduct  a  fur  farm  on  which  protected 
animals  are  reared ;  fee,  $2. 

Bounties.  —  None  paid  by  State.  Counties  may  at  their  discretion  pay  bounty 
on  ground  hog  and  crow. 

INDIANA. 

Open  seasons.  —  Beaver,  raccoon,  fox,  otter,  opossum,  and  skunk,  November 
20  to  February  i ;  mink  and  muskrat,  November  i  to  March  31.  Muskrat  houses 
protected  at  all  times  except  when  obstructing  ditches  or  watercourses. 

Trapping.  —  Nonresident  trapper  requires  license  (fee,  $15.50).  Trapping  on 
lands  of  another  without  written  consent  of  owner,  occupant,  or  lessee  is  unlawful. 
Traps  set  on  such  lands  must  be  placed  within  burrow  of  animal  or  a  hollow  log 
and  must  be  visited  at  least  once  in  each  36  hours.  Protected  fur  animals  may  be 
killed  at  any  time  on  one's  own  premises  to  protect  property. 

Propagation.  —  All  birds  and  animals  raised  in  captivity  are  considered 
domestic  stock,  and  the  owner  may  possess,  sell,  ship,  transport,  or  otherwise 
dispose  of  them  without  regard  to  laws  regulating  the  killing  and  disposition  of 
wild  birds  and  animals. 

Bounties.  —  Crow,  10  cents  each ;  may  be  paid  by  counties.  Boards  of  county 
commissioners  are  authorized  at  their  discretion  to  pay  bounty  on  wolf,  fox,  wood- 
chuck,  owl,  or  hawk. 

IOWA. 

Open  seasons.  —  Beaver,  mink,  otter  and  muskrat,  November  15  to  March  15; 
may  be  destroyed  at  any  time  to  protect  public  or  private  property.  Muskrat 
houses  are  protected  at  all  times.  Possession  of  beaver,  mink,  otter,  or  muskrat 
is  lawful  only  during  open  season  and  first  five  days  of  close  season. 

Trapping.  —  Hunting  license  required  for  trapping;  fee,  resident,  $1;  non- 
resident, $10.50. 

Propagation.  —  No  restrictions  except  as  to  possession  of  protected  species. 

Bounties.  —  Adult  wolf,  $20;  wolf  cub,  $4;  wildcat,  $1;  paid  by  county. 
Boards  of  supervisors  of  counties  may  allow  bounty  on  crow,  ground  hog,  pocket 
gopher,  or  rattlesnake. 


i64  THE  FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

KANSAS. 

Open  seasons.  —  Muskrat,  skunk,  mink,  raccoon,  opossum,  and  civet  cat, 
November  15  to  March  15.     No  open  season  for  beaver  or  otter  until  1921. 

Trapping.  —  The  owner  or  legal  occupant  of  land  may  destroy  fur-bearing 
animals  protected  by  law  when  such  animals  are  destroying  poultry  or  damaging 
other  property.  Unlawful  to  hunt  or  kill  any  wild  animal  upon  the  lands  of  an- 
other without  his  written  permission. 

Propagation.  —  No  legislation. 

Bounties.  —  Coyote,  $1 ;  wolf,  $5 ;  crow  and  pocket  gopher,  5  cents  each ; 
paid  by  county. 

KENTUCKY. 

open  seasons.  —  Beaver,  mink,  raccoon,  otter,  opossum,  and  skunk,  November 
15  to  December  31;  but  raccoon,  opossum,  skunk,  and  mink  may  also  be  taken 
and  killed  by  dog  or  gun,  October  i  to  February  15. 

Trapping.  —  Written  consent  of  owner  or  lessee  required  to  trap  on  lands  of 
another.  Traps  must  be  set  18  inches  or  more  within  a  hole,  cave,  or  hollow  log, 
and  must  be  visited  within  each  36  hours.  Traps  set  unlawfully  may  be  seized 
or  destroyed  by  anyone.  Fur  animals  may  be  killed  at  any  time  on  one's  own 
premises  to  protect  property. 

Propagation.  —  No  legislation. 

LOUISIANA. 

Open  seasons.  —  Bear,  November  i  to  February  15  (may  not  be  trapped); 
muskrat,  mink,  otter,  raccoon,  skunk,  fox,  and  opossum,  November  i  to  Febru- 
ary 15;  beaver,  no  open  season. 

Trapping.  —  License  for  trapping  is  required ;  fee,  resident,  $2 ;  nonresident, 
$15.  Muskrats  may  be  taken  at  any  time  within  5  miles  of  any  levee,  and  may 
be  killed  by  the  owner  of  land  upon  which  they  are  destroying  property.  Skins 
of  animals  killed  in  open  season  may  be  possessed  in  close  season.  Wild  ducks 
may  not  be  used  for  trap  bait. 

Propagation.  —  Fur  animals  for  breeding  purposes  may  not  be  captured  dur- 
ing the  close  season.  Permit  from  the  department  of  conservation  is  required  to 
import  wild  quadrupeds  into  the  State  or  to  export  them  from  the  State. 

Bounties.  —  None  paid. 

MAINE. 

open  seasons.  —  All  fur  animals  (except  beaver,  muskrat,  raccoon,  bear,  bob- 
cat, Canada  lynx  [loup  cervier],  and  weasel),  October  15  to  February  29;   musk- 


APPENDIX  TO  PART  I  165 

rat,  October  15  to  May  14;  raccoon,  August  15  to  February  29.  No  open  season 
on  beaver  except  when  declared  by  the  commissioner  of  inland  fisheries  and  game. 
No  close  season  on  bear,  bobcat,  Canada  lynx  (loup  cervier),  or  weasel.  Unlawful 
to  transport  or  dispose  of  a  beaver  skin  without  official  seal  of  commissioner 
attached. 

Trapping.  —  Special  beaver  trapping  license,  good  only  in  territory  opened  to 
beaver  trapping  by  commissioner;  fee,  $25.  Trappers  in  unorganized  townships 
of  the  State  are  required  to  take  out  an  annual  license  except  for  bear  and  bobcat 
(fee,  ^10),  and  on  or  before  December  15  of  each  year  must  make  such  report  as 
the  commissioner  of  inland  fisheries  and  game  may  require.  Any  person  who  sets 
a  trap  in  an  organized  county  or  incorporated  place  must  obtain  written  consent 
of  the  owner  or  occupant  of  land  on  which  the  trap  is  set,  and  must  visit  such  trap 
at  least  once  in  every  24  hours  and  remove  animals  caught.  All  traps  must  be 
plainly  marked  with  owner's  name  and  address,  either  by  having  the  same  stamped 
on  the  trap  or  on  a  metal  tag  firmly  attached  to  it.  A  bear  trap  must  be  inclosed 
in  a  "hut." 

Dealers  in  skins  of  fur  animals  must  each  year  take  out  a  license  (fee,  State, 
$2$ ;  county,  $2)  to  engage  in  this  trade  and  must  keep  a  record  of  transactions 
and  forward  same  to  the  commissioner  of  inland  fisheries  and  game  on  or  before 
December  20.  Putting  out  poison  for  wolves,  foxes,  dogs,  or  other  animals  is 
forbidden  under  penalty  of  fine  or  imprisonment. 

Traps  may  not  be  set  within  25  feet  of  a  muskrat  house.  (Special  laws  in 
southern  Oxford  and  certain  territory  in  Washington  County.)  On  complaint 
by  landowners  of  damage  done  by  beavers,  the  commissioner  of  inland  fisheries  and 
game  has  authority  to  declare  an  open  season  for  beavers  on  lands  where  damage 
occurs.  Any  person  may  lawfully  kill  any  wild  animal,  except  beaver,  found 
destroying  his  property.     Unlawful  to  dig  out  a  fox  den  at  any  time. 

Propagation.  —  Permit  required  to  raise  fur  animals  (fee,  $2).  Protected 
species  may  be  taken  under  special  permits  by  licensed  trappers  for  breeding 
purposes.     No  animals  may  be  imported  into  the  State  without  permit. 

Bounties.  —  Bobcat  and  Canada  lynx  (loup  cervier),  $10  each ;  paid  by  State. 
Claim  for  bounty  must  be  made  within  five  days  after  killing  or  return  from  trip 
on  which  killing  was  done.  Bounty  on  bears,  $5  each;  paid  by  State,  claim  to 
be  made  within  10  days  after  killing. 

MARYLAND. 

While  the  State  has  recently  adopted  a  uniform  open  season  for  game,  the 
counties  still  regulate  the  taking  of  fur  animals.  The  State  law  of  1900  (ch.  371) 
protecting  otter,  raccoon,  and  muskrat  between  April  i  and  January  i  was  amended 


i66  THE  FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

until  it  applied  to  only  six  counties  in  191 2  (ch.  843),  some  of  which  also  have 
local  laws  that  take  precedence.  Local  laws  providing  protection  to  fur  animals 
or  regulating  their  capture  are  in  force  in  the  following  counties ; 

Allegany  County.  —  Raccoon  and  opossum,  open  season,  September  I  to  March  31; 
hunting  license  required  to  capture  either.  Muskrat,  open  season,  January  i  to  April  i. 
Bounty  on  wildcat,  $2 ;  fox,  $1 ;    hawk  or  hoot  owl,  50  cents. 

Anne  Arundel  County.  —  Raccoon,  open  season,  October  i  to  January  3 1 ;  may  not  be 
taken  between  sunrise  and  sunset;  unlawful  to  cut  down  tree  to  obtain  a  raccoon.  Musk- 
rat,  open  season,  December  i  to  March  i.  Unlawful  at  any  time  to  destroy  muskrat  dens  or 
houses,  unless  the  animals  are  destroying  property. 

Baltimore  County.  —  Unlawful  to  set  traps,  except  from  November  10  to  December  20. 
Unlawful  to  pursue  or  kill  raccoon  and  opossums,  except  from  October  i  to  February  28 
(inclusive) ;  unlawful  to  hunt  them  on  Sundays  or  when  snow  covers  the  ground.  Permits 
to  take  certain  predatory  fur  animals  when  destroying  property  may  be  obtained,  but  such 
permits  may  be  revoked  at  any  time  by  the  chief  game  warden.  Foxes  may  not  be  shot  or 
shot  at  while  pursued  by  dogs,  and  it  is  a  misdemeanor  to  dig  young  foxes  or  vixen  from  dens. 

Caroline  County.  —  Muskrat,  open  season,  December  15  to  March  31 ;  raccoon,  Septem- 
ber 15  to  March  31;  otter,  December  15  to  March  31.  Unlawful  for  nonresidents  to  trap 
without  license  (fee,  $4.50).  Unlawful  to  dig  into  or  destroy  muskrat  homes  or  dens,  except 
when  animals  are  destroying  property.  Unlawful  to  use  reflector  or  artificial  light  in  taking 
muskrats  or  otters.  Unlawful  to  kill  a  fox  except  by  hounds  in  a  hunt  or  when  the  fox  is 
destroying  poultry. 

Carroll  County.  —  Unlawful  to  kill  fox  except  by  hounds  in  a  hunt  or  when  the  fox  is 
destroying  poultry. 

Cecil  County.  —  Muskrat,  open  season,  December  i  to  February  28  (29)  ;  may  be  taken 
only  by  trapping. 

Charles  County.  —  Unlawful  to  shoot  muskrats  on  Nanjemoy  Creek  and  tributaries  by 
aid  of  light. 

Dorchester  County.  —  Open  season,  raccoon,  November  10  to  March  14;  otter,  January 
I  to  March  31  (State  law);  muskrat,  January  I  to  March  15  (local  law).  Unlawful  to 
shoot  muskrats  or  to  use  artificial  light  in  taking  them.     Bounty  on  crow,  5  cents. 

Frederick  County.  —  All  fur  animals,  open  season,  November  15  to  February  28  (29), 
but  night  hunting  with  dogs  for  raccoon  or  opossum  is  lawful  at  any  time.  Bounty  on  wild- 
cat, $2;  mink  or  fox,  $1 ;  weasel,  owl,  or  hawk,  50  cents. 

Garrett  County.  —  Bounty  on  panther  or  wolf,  $20;  wildcat,  ^3;  fox,  ^i;  weasel,  50 
cents. 

Harford  County.  —  Except  for  muskrats,  trapping  is  forbidden  between  December  25 
and  November  15  of  the  following  year.  Open  season  for  raccoon,  October  2  to  November 
30.  License  required  to  take  muskrats  or  skunks ;  fee,  resident,  $1.15;  nonresident,  $5.15. 
Unlawful  to  trap  on  private  property  without  permission  of  owner.  Bounty  of  50  cents  each 
on  chicken  hawk,  pigeon  hawk,  booby  owl,  or  weasel. 

Kent  County.  —  Otter,  raccoon,  and  muskrat,  open  season,  January  i  to  March  31 
(State  law).     Unlawful  to  shoot  muskrat  or  otter  by  light  at  night. 

Montgomery  County.  —  Raccoon  and  opossum,  open  season,  October  15  to  January  14; 
muskrat,  November  15  to  February  28  (29).  Nonresident  requires  license  to  hunt  raccoon 
or  opossum  (fee,  $15.50).  Setting  a  snare  or  trap  in  or  about  a  fox  den  is  unlawful.  Bounty 
on  hawks,  40  cents. 


APPENDIX  TO  PART  I  167 

Prince  Georges  County.  —  Unlawful  to  hunt,  shoot,  or  trap  muskrats  in  Aquasco  district 
between  March  15  and  January  i,  or  to  spear  them  at  any  time.  Raccoon,  open  season, 
October  i  to  January  31;  may  not  be  taken  between  sunrise  and  sunset;  unlawful  to  cut 
down  tree  to  capture  raccoon. 

Queen  Annes  County.  —  Otter,  raccoon,  and  muskrat,  open  season,  January  I  to  March 
31  (State  law). 

Somerset  County.  —  Otter  and  raccoon,  open  season,  January  i  to  March  3 1  (State  law) ; 
muskrat,  January  I  to  March  i;  (local  law).     Unlawful  at  any  time  to  shoot  muskrats. 

Talbot  County.  —  Otter  and  muskrat,  open  season,  December  16  to  March  15.  Dealers 
may  have  skins  of  either  in  possession  up  to  March  31.  Unlawful  to  take  otter  or  muskrat 
at  night,  except  in  traps. 

Washington  County.  —  Muskrat,  mink,  skunk,  opossum,  and  otter,  open  season,  Decem- 
ber I  to  March  31.     Unlawful  to  shoot  foxes  while  they  are  being  chased  by  dogs. 

Wicomico  County.  —  Otter,  mink,  and  muskrat,  open  season,  January  i  to  April  i. 
Muskrats  may  be  taken  only  by  traps  and  muskrat  houses  are  protected  at  all  times. 

Worcester  County.  —  Muskrat,  otter,  and  mink,  open  season,  January  i  to  April  i. 
Unlawful  to  trap  on  lands  or  marshes  of  another  without  permission.  Unlawful  to  chase 
fox  with  dogs,  March  10  to  August  31,  or  to  shoot  any  fox  while  it  is  pursued  by  dogs. 

Bounties.  —  A  State  bounty  of  50  cents  each  on  bird  hawk  or  chicken  hawk 
killed  in  the  State,  paid  from  the  State  game  protective  fund. 


MASSACHUSETTS. 

Ofen  seasons.  —  Raccoon,  October  i  to  December  31.  No  close  season  for 
other  fur  animals. 

Trapping.  —  Poison  may  not  be  used  to  kill  animals,  except  rats,  woodchucks, 
or  other  pests  on  one's  own  premises.  The  use  of  steel  traps  with  spread  of  over 
6  inches  and  "choke"  traps  with  greater  opening  than  6  inches  is  unlawful,  as  is 
also  the  use  of  snares  or,  except  with  consent  of  landowner,  of  scented  baits.  Traps 
may  not  be  set  on  inclosed  lands  of  another  without  written  consent.  Traps 
must  be  visited  at  least  once  in  24  hours.  Animals  "may  be  taken  from  traps  on 
the  Lord's  day,"  but  traps  may  not  be  set  or  reset.  Introduction  of  foxes  or  rac- 
coons in  Dukes  County  is  prohibited. 

•Propagation.  —  No  legislation. 

Bounties.  —  Seals,  $2 ;  wildcat  or  lynx,  ^5 ;  paid  by  town,  but  refunded  by 
county. 

MICHIGAN. 

open  seasons.  —  Beaver  (under  special  license),  November  i  to  April  15; 
otter,  mink,  fisher,  and  marten,  November  16  to  February  14;  raccoon,  October 
15  to  December  31 ;  muskrat,  north  of  Range  20  north,  October  16  to  April  14; 
south  of  Range  21  north,  December  16  to  March  31.  No  close  season  for  skunk, 
bear,  wolf,  coyote,  fox,  lynx,  and  wildcat. 


i68  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

Badger,  beaver,  and  muskrat,  in  and  within  2  miles  of  any  city  public  park 
containing  over  200  acres,  of  which  150  acres  or  more  is  woodland,  no  open  season. 

Trapping.  —  License  required  for  trapping,  or  hunting  bear  and  other  unpro- 
tected animals;  fee,  resident,  $1;  nonresident,  $10.  A  special  license  (fee,  $10) 
is  required  for  trapping  beavers.  Such  license  permits  the  taking  of  15  beavers, 
not  more  than  4  from  a  single  colony.  Unlawful  to  destroy  beaver  houses  or  dams 
or  to  have  carcass  or  skin  in  possession  without  license  seal  attached.  Unlawful 
to  molest  dens  of  fur  animals  or  to  use  spears,  explosives,  chemicals,  mechanical 
devices,  or  smokers  to  drive  animals  from  their  holes  or  homes ;  unlawful  to  destroy 
beaver,  muskrat,  or  skunk  den  or  home,  to  shoot  muskrats,  or  to  set  a  trap  within 
6  feet  of  a  muskrat  house  or  hole,  or  to  possess  carcass  or  skin  of  fur  animal  killed 
in  close  season.  Fur  animals,  except  beavers,  may  be  destroyed  on  one's  own  prem- 
ises to  protect  property.     Unlawful  to  trap  on  State  game  refuges. 

Propagation.  —  Annual  license  (fee,  $5)  required  to  engage  in  raising  fur 
animals.  Live  animals  and  skins  of  animals  raised  in  captivity  must  be  tagged 
(fee,  5  cents  for  each  tag). 

Bounties.  —  Wolf,  $35 ;  wolf  cub  under  6  months,  $15 ;  coyote,  same  as  wolf; 
wildcat  or  lynx,  $5 ;  fox,  $1 ;  weasel,  woodchuck,  hawk,  or  owl,  50  cents ;  paid  by 
county,  half  refunded  by  State.  Boards  of  supervisors  may  pay  additional  boun- 
ties. 

MINNESOTA. 

Open  seasons.  — No  open  season  for  beaver  or  otter;  raccoon,  October  15  to 
March  i;  mink,  fisher,  marten,  and  muskrat,  December  i  to  April  i.  Black 
bear,  skunk,  weasel,  wildcat,  lynx,  and  fox,  unprotected.  The  commissioner,  in 
his  judgment,  may  issue  licenses  (fee,  $1 ;  bond,  $500)  to  trap  a  limited  number 
of  beaver  in  any  locality ;  skins  of  beaver  taken  under  proper  license,  when  tagged 
with  a  $3  tag,  may  be  bought,  sold,  or  transported  at  any  time. 

Trapping. — Trapping  license  issued  to  residents  only,  fee  $l.  Unlawful  to 
molest  or  destroy  muskrat,  mink,  or  beaver  house,  den,  dam,  or  abiding  place  at 
any  time  or  to  hunt  these  animals  with  dogs.  Mink,  fisher,  and  marten  may  be 
taken  in  any  manner,  and  muskrat  may  be  taken  by  trapping  only.  Unlawful 
to  take  red  fox  cubs  for  shipment  out  of  the  State.  If  any  of  these  animals  are 
damaging  property  the  owner  may  obtain  a  permit  to  kill  them  and  destroy  their 
houses  or  dams.  Skins  or  pelts  legally  taken  may  be  possessed,  bought,  or  sold 
at  any  time.  Package  or  receptacle  containing  wild  quadruped  or  part  thereof 
when  transported  by  a  common  carrier  must  have  attached  a  proper  coupon  tag 
bearing  signature  of  licensee  shipping  same,  and  show  his  address  and  license 
number,  together  with  number  and  kinds  of  wild  animals  or  parts  thereof  con- 
tained in  the  shipment. 


APPENDIX  TO  PART  I  169 

Propagation.  —  Wild  animals  raised  in  captivity  under  a  $i  permit  from  the 
State  game  and  fish  commissioner  may  be  sold  for  breeding  or  stocking  purposes 
at  any  time,  and  under  regulations  of  the  commissioner  may  be  killed  and  any 
part  thereof  sold  or  transported.  Under  regulations  of  the  commissioner,  wild 
animals  may  be  captured  during  the  open  season  for  breeding  purposes. 

Bounties. — Wolf,  $7.50;  cub  wolf,  $3  (paid  by  State).  County  or  town 
boards  may  offer  bounty  on  wolf,  gopher,  ground  squirrel,  ground  hog,  rattlesnake, 
crow,  or  blackbird. 

MISSISSIPPI. 

Open  seasons.  —  Bear,  November  i  to  end  of  February. 
Trapping.  —  No  legislation.^ 
Propagation.  —  No  legislation. 
Bounties.  —  None  paid. 

MISSOURI. 

Open  seasons.  —  All  fur  animals,  November  i  to  January  31. 

Trapping.  —  Wild  fur-bearing  animals  may  be  destroyed  at  any  time  and  in 
any  way  to  protect  premises  from  their  depredations,  and  pelts  of  animals  so 
killed  may  be  removed  and  marketed  in  the  usual  way.  Unlawful  to  sell  or  offer 
for  sale  pelts  of  fur  animals  taken  out  of  season.  Written  permission  required  to 
trap  on  lands  of  another.     Use  of  poison  prohibited  in  taking  any  protected  animal. 

Propagation.  —  Permits  to  capture  for  propagating  purposes  may  be  obtained 
from  the  State  game  and  fish  commissioner;  fee,  $5.     Breeder's  permit,  fee,  ^5. 

Bounties.  —  Adult  wolf  or  coyote,  $6;  young  wolf  or  young  coyote,  ^3 ;  paid 
by  county  and  one-half  refunded  by  State. 

MONTANA. 

open  seasons.  —  Marten,  September  15  to  May  i.  Beaver  may  be  taken  only 
under  a  license;  provided,  taxpayers,  owners  of  real  estate,  or  their  authorized 
agents,  may  kill  beaver  on  their  own  premises  for  the  protection  of  their  ditches,  dams, 
etc.,  but  such  killing  must  be  reported  in  writing  to  the  State  game  warden  within 
30  days.  The  skins  of  animals  so  taken  may  be  shipped  or  sold  under  permit  from 
the  warden  by  the  persons  killing  the  animals,  but  permittees  are  required  to  re- 
port name  of  purchaser  and  number  of  skins  sold. 

Trapping.  —  License  (fee,  $1.50)  required  for  trapping,  except  for  wolves, 
coyotes,  and  mountain  lions.     Special  license  required  for  trapping  beavers,  and 

1  The  act  for  protection  of  game  and  fur  animals  (1916,  ch.  99)  was  defeated  by  referendum 
vote. 


I70  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

permit  required  to  sell  beaver  skins.  Special  license  (fee,  $5)  required  for  trapping 
on  State  game  preserves.     Marten  trapping  license;  fee,  $1. 

Propagation.  —  No  legislation. 

Bounties.  —  Grown  wolf,  $15;  wolf  pup,  coyote,  or  coyote  pup,  $2.50;  moun- 
tain lion,  $10;  paid  from  State  bounty  fund  raised  by  tax  on  live  stock. 

NEBRASKA. 

Open  seasons.  —  Muskrat,  opossum,  and  otter,  November  20  to  March  20 ; 
skunk,  raccoon,  September  20  to  March  20 ;  mink,  December  i  to  January  3 1 .  Un- 
lawful to  destroy  muskrat  houses  on  premises  of  another.  Beaver,  no  open  sea- 
son, but  if  the  animals  are  damaging  property  a  permit  to  destroy  them  may  be 
obtained  from  the  chief  deputy,  game  and  fish  commission.  No  close  season  for 
other  fur  animals;  any  except  beavers  may  be  taken  at  any  time  on  one's  own 
premises. 

Trapping.  —  Trapping  license,  resident,  $2 ;  nonresident  or  alien,  $10.  Un- 
lawful to  trap  on  premises  of  another  without  consent  of  owner. 

Propagation.  —  No  legislation. 

Bounties.  —  Such  counties  as  have  at  any  general  election  voted  to  pay  bounties, 
pay  for  wolf,  $3  ;  wildcat  or  coyote,  ^i ;   mountain  lion,  $3. 

NEVADA. 

Open  seasons.  —  No  close  season  except  on  beavers,  which  may  not  be  taken 
until  January  i,  1920. 

Trapping.  —  No  legislation. 

Propagation.  —  License  (fee,  ^lo,  paid  annually  to  county)  required  from  those 
who  wish  to  propagate  game  or  fur  animals  (except  beaver).  Animals  on  breeder's 
own  lands  may  be  taken  at  any  time  for  propagation,  and  those  held  in  captivity 
by  holder  of  license  may  be  sold  at  any  time.  No  bounty  may  be  collected  on 
noxious  species  raised  in  captivity. 

Bounties.  —  Mountain  lion,  $5  ;  lynx  or  wildcat,  $2 ;  paid  by  county.  Counties 
pay  bounty  of  i^  cents  each  for  pocket  gophers  when  at  least  100  heads  are  pre- 
sented at  one  time. 

The  State  board  of  live-stock  commissioners  is  authorized  to  pay  bounty 
from  funds  derived  from  tax  on  horses,  cattle,  and  hogs.  The  rewards  are,  for 
coyote,  coyote  pup,  wildcat,  or  lynx,  75  cents  each;   mountain  lion,  ^5.^ 

The  State  board  of  sheep  commissioners  is  authorized  to  pay  bounty  from 
funds  derived  from  tax  on  sheep,  the  payments  being  the  same  as  those  made 
by  the  board  of  live-stock  commissioners.^ 

*  No  bounties  have  been  paid  under  the  provisions  of  this  law.  '  Ibid. 


APPENDIX  TO  PART  I  171 


NEW   HAMPSHIRE. 

Open  seasons.  —  All  fur-bearing  animals,  except  beaver,  November  i  to  Febru- 
ary 29,  except  muskrats  may  be  taken  from  the  waters  of  the  Connecticut  River 
from  November  i  to  March  31.  No  open  season  for  beaver.  Raccoons  and  foxes 
may  be  taken  by  use  of  dog  and  gun  during  October. 

Trapping.  —  Fur-bearing  animals  defined  as  beaver,  otter,  marten,  sable, 
mink,  raccoon,  fisher,  fox,  skunk,  and  muskrat.  The  right  of  anyone  to  kill  preda- 
tory fur  animals  at  any  time  when  destroying  domestic  animals  or  fowls  is  granted. 
Skins  legally  taken  may  be  bought  or  sold  at  any  time.  No  person  may  destroy 
a  muskrat  house  or  set  a  trap  therein,  thereon,  or  at  the  entrance  thereof.  No 
person  may  trap  upon  lands  of  which  he  is  not  owner  or  lessee.  All  traps  must 
be  legibly  marked  or  stamped  with  trapper's  name,  and  must  be  visited  at  least 
once  in  24  hours.  It  is  an  offence  punishable  by  a  fine  to  take  traps  of  another 
or  remove  fur  animals  from  them.  Unlawful  to  use  spring  gun,  snare,  or  poison 
in  taking  fur  animals.  Bear  traps  must  be  safeguarded  in  a  substantial  manner. 
License  for  trapping,  except  on  private  lands,  is  required ;  fee,  resident,  $1 ;  non- 
resident, $15.  Trappers  are  liable  for  any  damage  to  domestic  animals  by 
traps. 

Unlawful  to  tear  down  or  destroy  any  fence  or  wall,  leave  open  any  gate  or 
bars,  or  trample  or  destroy  any  crop,  on  land  of  another,  while  trapping  or  pur- 
suing any  wild  animals. 

Propagation.  —  Permit  (fee,  $2)  required  to  propagate  fur  animals,  game,  or 
fish. 

Bounties.  —  Bear,  $5 ;  hedgehog,  20  cents ;    wildcat,  $s ;  paid  by  State. 


NEW  JERSEY. 

open  seasons.  —  Skunk,  mink,  muskrat,  and  otter,  November  15  to  April  i; 
raccoon,  October  i  to  December  15.  Beaver,  unlawful  to  trap,  take,  kill,  or  have 
in  possession  at  any  time.  The  board  of  fish  and  game  commissioners  may  grant 
permits  to  hunt  foxes  with  hound  and  firearms  from  the  last  day  of  the  open  sea- 
son for  quail  (December  15)  to  May  31. 

Trapping.  —  Skunks,  minks,  muskrats,  and  otters  may  not  be  taken  in  close 
season,  except  that  muskrats  may  be  destroyed  by  owner  of  canal  or  dam  which 
they  are  destroying.  Muskrats,  skunk,  mink,  otter,  may  be  taken  by  trap  only, 
except  in  Salem  County,  above  Mill  Creek,  where  they  may  be  taken  in  open  season 
by  firearms  and  light.  It  is  unlawful  to  disturb  the  lodge  or  nesting  chamber  of 
muskrats,  to  molest  traps  set  by  another,  or  to  appropriate  or  take  animals  caught 
in  such  traps. 


172  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

Propagation.  —  No  restrictions  except  those  imposed  by  close  seasons,  during 
which  wild  animals  may  not  be  taken  for  breeding  purposes.  Breeder's  license, 
fee  $s. 

Bounties.  —  Fox,  $3 ;  paid  by  counties. 


NEW   MEXICO. 

Open  seasons.  —  No  close  season  for  fur  animals,  except  beavers,  which  are 
protected  at  all  times ;  provided,  when  beavers  are  destroying  property  they  may 
be  killed  under  permit  from  state  game  and  fish  warden. 

Trapping.  —  No  legislation. 

Propagation.  —  Permit  from  State  game  warden  required. 

Bounties.  —  Coyote,  wildcat,  or  lynx,  $2 ;  wolf,  $15 ;  panther  or  mountain  lion, 
$10;  paid  from  county  wild-animal  fund,  raised  by  tax  on  property. 

NEW  YORK. 

Open  seasons.  —  Mink  and  sable,  November  10  to  March  15;  raccoon  may  be 
taken  otherwise  than  by  trapping  in  the  Catskill  Park,  October  i  to  March  15; 
raccoon,  elsewhere  in  State,  November  10  to  February  10;  skunk,  November  10 
to  February  10;  muskrat,  November  10  to  April  20.     No  open  season  for  beaver. 

Trapping.  —  License  required  for  hunting  or  trapping;  fee,  resident,  $1.10; 
nonresident,  $10.  Muskrat  houses  may  not  be  molested,  injured,  or  disturbed, 
nor  the  animals  shot  at  any  time.  Skunks  may  not  be  taken  by  the  aid  of  dogs 
or  by  digging  out  or  driving  them  from  dens  or  holes  by  smoking  or  the  use  of  chemi- 
cals ;  if  injuring  property,  they  may  be  taken  at  any  time  and  in  any  manner,  but 
the  skins  of  animals  so  taken  shall  not  be  possessed,  sold,  bought,  or  trafficked  in. 
Unlawful  to  set  traps  during  close  season. 

Propagation.  —  All  protected  fur  animals  may  be  kept  alive  in  captivity  for 
propagation  and  sale,  provided  a  license  be  obtained  from  the  conservation  com- 
mission (fee,  $5).  No  fur-bearing  animals  may  be  kept  which  are  taken  wild  dui- 
ing  close  season  for  such  animals  (unless  taken  under  license) ;  nor  may  they  be 
disposed  of  during  close  season.  The  conservation  commission  is  authorized  to 
issue  license  to  capture  animals  for  propagation;   fee  for  permit,  ^i. 

Bounties.  —  Panther,  $20,  paid  by  State;  none  paid  since  May,  1884. 

NORTH   CAROLINA. 

[More  than  half  of  the  100  counties  in  the  State  have  local  laws  relating  to 
fur  animals,  and  information  regarding  open  seasons,  license  requirements,  and 


APPENDIX  TO  PART  I  173 

trapping  and  hunting  restrictions  may  be  obtained  from  the  secretary,  Audubon 
Society  of  North  Carolina,  Raleigh.] 

NORTH  DAKOTA. 

Open  seasons.  —  Mink  and  muskrat,  November  i6  to  April  14;  otter,  no 
open  season ;  beaver,  January  10  to  March  10.  Only  licensed  trapper  may  take 
beaver,  but  not  upon  posted  lands.  Possession  of  green  hides  of  mink  or  muskrat 
illegal  after  April  19. 

Trapping.  —  Licenses  are  required  of  persons  over  16  years  of  age  to  trap 
except  on  their  own  lands;  fee,  resident,  $2;  nonresident  (mink  and  muskrat 
only),  $25.  The  protected  fur  animals  are  mink,  muskrat,  otter,  and  beaver; 
but  minks  and  muskrats  may  be  killed  at  any  time  by  owner  of  property  destroyed 
by  them.     Muskrat  houses  are  protected  at  all  times. 

Propagation.  —  The  State  game  and  fish  board  issues  permits  (fee,  $5)  to 
breed  and  domesticate  mink,  muskrat,  skunk,  and  raccoon,  and  also  permits  to  sell 
or  ship  them  when  raised  in  captivity.  Under  permit  from  board  and  $500  bonds 
wild  fur  animals  may  be  taken  at  any  time  for  breeding  purposes.  Annual  reports 
are  required  of  licensed  breeders. 

Bounties.  — Wolf  or  coyote  (killed  within  State),  $2.50  each;  paid  from  fund 
raised  by  direct  taxation  on  all  property. 

OHIO. 

Open  seasons.  —  Raccoon,  mink,  skunk,  and  opossum,  November  i  to  February 
i;  muskrat,  December  i  to  March  i;  fox,  October  2  to  January  i.  Protected 
animals  may  be  destroyed  by  owner  of  premises  (except  on  Sunday)  when  dam- 
aging property. 

Trapping.  —  Hunting  and  trapping  license  required;  fees,  resident,  ^i ;  non- 
resident, $15.  License  not  required  of  owners,  managers,  tenants,  or  their  chil- 
dren to  trap  during  open  season  on  own  land.  Written  permission  from  owner 
or  authorized  agent  required  to  trap  on  lands  of  another.  The  close  season  for 
certain  fur  animals  does  not  prohibit  owners  or  tenants  of  land  from  destroying 
them  to  protect  property.  Digging  out  dens  or  smoking,  or  drowning  the  animals 
therefrom  is  unlawful,  as  is  also  the  destruction  of  the  house,  den,  or  burrow  of  any 
fur  animal. 

Propagation.  —  No  restrictions,  except  those  which  prevent  capture  of  wild 
stock  in  close  season. 

Bounties.  —  Townships  pay  a  bounty  of  $1  each  on  certain  hawks  and  great- 
horned  owl;  20  cents  per  dozen  on  English  sparrows;  and,  under  certain  condi- 
tions, 10  cents  each  on  ground  hogs. 


174  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

OKLAHOMA. 

Open  seasons.  —  No  open  season  for  otter  or  beaver.  Other  fur  animals, 
November  i  to  March  i.  No  open  season  for  bear  in  Comanche,  Caddo,  Kiowa, 
Major,  and  Blaine  Counties. 

Trapping.  —  Unlawful  to  sell  pelts  of  fur  animals  taken  between  March  i 
and  November  i. 

Propagation.  —  The  State  game  warden  issues  permits  to  propagate  fur- 
bearing  animals,  game,  and  fish ;  cost,  $2,  together  with  fees  for  tagging.  Licensed 
breeders  may  sell  and  transport  animals  raised  in  preserves  under  rules  prescribed 
by  the  warden. 

Bounties.  —  County  commissioners  are  authorized  to  offer  bounty  on  gray 
wolf  ($3)  and  coyote  ($1).  Bounties  on  hawks,  crows,  etc.,  paid  by  counties  (not 
to  exceed  $200  a  year  in  any  county)  are  refunded  to  county  from  State  game 
fund. 

OREGON. 

open  seasons.  —  Mink,  otter,  fisher,  marten,  and  muskrat,  November  i  to 
February  28,  inclusive.  No  open  season  for  beaver.  No  open  season  for  fur  ani- 
mals on  State  game  preserve. 

Trapping.  —  License  (fee,  ^i)  is  required  of  all  persons  over  16  years  of  age  to 
trap  on  lands  not  their  own.  No  flesh  of  game  animal  or  bird  may  be  used  to  bait 
traps.  Unlawful  to  remove  or  disturb  traps  of  a  licensed  trapper  on  public  domain 
or  on  lands  where  he  has  permission  to  trap.  Licensed  trappers  are  required  to 
make  annual  reports  of  number  of  animals  caught  and  receipts  for  fur  sold.  If 
beavers  or  other  fur  animals  damage  property,  permits  to  kill  them  may  be  obtained 
from  the  State  board  of  fish  and  game  commissioners.  Skins  of  such  animals  are 
the  property  of  the  State,  to  be  sold  and  the  proceeds  used  in  paying  for  damage 
to  property.  Unlawful  to  destroy  muskrat  house,  except  where  it  obstructs  ditch 
or  water  course. 

Propagation.  —  Permits  (fee,  ^2)  to  keep  fur-bearing  animals  may  be  obtained 
from  the  State  board.  No  wild  fur  animals  may  be  taken  for  propagating 
purposes  in  close  season  nor  may  those  held  in  captivity  under  permit  be  sold  in 
that  season.     Yearly  reports  to  the  State  board  are  required. 

Bounties.  —  Coyote  or  coyote  pup,  $3  ;  adult  female,  coyote,  $4;  gray,  black, 
or  timber  wolf,  or  wolf  pup,  $2.50;  bobcat,  wildcat,  or  lynx,  $2;  mountain  lion, 
panther,  or  cougar,  $10;  seal  or  seal  pup,  $2.50;  paid  by  county  and  half  refunded 
by  the  State.  The  State  board  is  empowered  to  pay  additional  bounties,  at  its 
discretion,  on  any  predatory  animal  in  order  to  protect  game;  under  this  act  the 
State  board  now  pays  for  wolf,  $20;  for  cougar,  $15.  Several  counties  are  au- 
thorized by  law  to  levy  a  special  tax  and  pay  bounties  on  moles,  rabbits,  or  gophers. 


APPENDIX  TO  PART  I  175 

PENNSYLVANIA. 

Open  seasons.  —  Bear,  October  15  to  December  15;  raccoon,  September  i 
to  December  31.  No  open  season  for  beaver.  Foxes  may  not  be  trapped,  shot, 
snared,  or  poisoned  in  Delaware  County. 

Trapping.  —  Nonresident  trapper  requires  license  (fee,  $10).  Unlawful  to 
trap  bears,  and  only  one  may  be  killed  in  a  season  or  three  to  a  camp  or  body  of  men. 
No  steel  traps  larger  than  No.  3  size  may  be  used  for  trapping  wildcats  or  other  fur 
animals.  Resident  requires  no  license  for  trapping,  but  hunting  licenses  required 
for  killing  raccoons  or  bears,  which  are  regarded  as  "game"  animals  (fee,  $1). 

Propagation.  —  No  restrictions  on  raising  fur  animals,  except  that  possession 
and  breeding  of  ferrets  is  unlawful  except  under  license  from  the  State  board  of 
game  commissioners;  fee  for  license  to  breed  and  sell  ferrets,  $25;  to  possess  a 
ferret  without  breeding,  $\. 

Bounties. — Wildcat,  $8;  fox,  $2;  mink,  $1 ;  weasel,  $2;  paid  from  special 
fund  created  by  setting  aside  one-half  the  receipts  by  the  board  of  game  com- 
missioners front  gun  licenses,  fines,  etc. 

PORTO   RICO. 

Porto  Rico  has  no  wild  fur  animals. 

RHODE   ISLAND. 

Open  seasons.  —  Skunk,  muskrat,  and  mink,  November  i  to  April  15 ;  raccoon, 
November  i  to  February  i.  Landowners  may  kill  protected  animals  on  their 
own  lands  at  any  time. 

Trapping.  —  Hunting  license  is  required  for  trapping,  except  on  one's  own 
lands;  fee,  resident,  ^i ;  nonresident,  $10;  alien,  $15  ;  together  with  an  additional 
fee  of  15  cents  for  issuing  license.  Unlawful  to  trap  on  posted  lands  or  on  lands 
of  another  without  written  permission.  Unlawful  to  set  wire  snares,  or  to  use  steel 
traps  with  teeth  or  with  spread  over  6  inches,  or  choke  traps  with  greater  opening 
than  6  inches.  Traps  must  be  concealed  so  as  not  to  endanger  domestic  animals 
and  must  be  visited  at  least  once  in  24  hours. 

Propagation.  —  No  legislation. 

Bounties.  —  Fox,  $3;  crow  and  certain  hawks  and  owls,  25  cents;  paid  by 
State. 

SOUTH   CAROLINA. 

open  seasons.  —  Bear,  mink,  muskrat,  opossum,  otter,  raccoon,  and  skunk, 
October  i  to  March  15;  fox,  September  i  to  February  15.  Foxes  and  wildcats 
may  be  killed  without  license  at  any  time  by  officers  of  the  law  and  landowners 
upon  their  own  holdings. 


176  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

Trapping. — Hunting  license  required;  fees,  resident,  county  license,  $l.lo; 
State,  $3.10;  nonresident,  $15.25.  No  license  required  of  landowner,  member 
of  his  family  or,  under  his  written  permission,  an  employee  to  take  fur  animals 
on  own  land  during  open  season.  Unlawful  to  hunt  on  lands  of  another  without 
consent  of  owner  or  manager. 

Propagation.  —  No  legislation. 

Bounties.  —  None  paid. 

SOUTH  DAKOTA. 

Open  seasons.  —  Mink,  muskrat,  skunk,  from  noon  December  i  to  noon  March 
I.     Otter  and  beaver,  no  open  season. 

Trapping.  — Trapping  license  required  of  residents  over  14  years  of  age;  fee, 
$5.  No  license  required  of  landowners  trapping  on  own  lands  during  open  season. 
Nonresident's  trapping  license,  fee,  $25. 

No  person  shall  set  or  operate  more  than  75  traps  at  any  one  time.  Unlawful 
to  shoot  muskrats,  or  to  destroy  or  molest  muskrat  houses,  except  they  may  be 
opened  without  injury  thereto  for  the  purpose  of  placing  traps  therein  during  open 
season.  Unlawful  to  buy,  sell,  ship,  or  have  in  possession  raw  skins  of  protected 
fur  animals  during  close  season. 

Skunk  doing  damage  around  buildings  may  be  killed  at  any  time,  and,  under 
permit  from  State  game  warden,  muskrats  or  beaver  damaging  irrigation  ditches, 
embankments,  or  public  highways  may  be  taken  at  any  time. 

Propagation.  —  No  restrictions,  except  that  protected  animals  may  not  be  taken 
for  breeding  purposes  in  close  season. 

Bounties.  —  Counties  shall  pay  $4  for  coyote  and  $S  for  wolf,  killed  within 
the  county. 

TENNESSEE. 

open  seasons.  —  For  trapping  fur  bearers  ofF  one's  own  land,  from  noon  Octo- 
ber 15  to  noon  January  15. 

Trapping.  —  Owner  of  land  may  hunt  or  trap  on  such  land  at  any  time ;  others 
may  do  so  only  with  written  consent  of  owner.  Steel  traps  must  be  placed  at  least 
12  inches  within  the  entrance  to  a  hole,  cave,  den,  or  hollow  log.  Traps  and  dead- 
falls must  be  inspected  within  each  36  hours,  and  captured  animals  removed; 
does  not  apply  to  trapping  wildcats  in  Lauderdale  County. 

Propagation.  —  No  legislation. 

Bounties.  —  Wolf  or  panther,  $2  certificate  issued  by  county  court,  the  amount 
to  be  applied  on  payment  of  taxes. 

Local  laws  of  counties: 

Blount  County.  —  Unlawful  to  shoot  fox,  to  trap  or  injure  young  foxes,  or  to  destroy 
their  dens. 


APPENDIX  TO  PART  I  177 

Carter  and  Johnson  Counties.  —  Unlawful  to  trap,  shoot,  or  kill  fox  or  to  destroy  fox 
den,  except  near  farm  buildings  when  they  destroy  fowls  or  live  stock. 

Claiborne,  Grainger,  Davidson,  Roane,  and  Shelby  Counties.  —  Unlawful  to  set  a  trap 
more  than  200  yards  from  trapper's  residence. 

Davidson,  Robertson,  and  Shelby  Counties.  —  Open  season  for  beaver,  muskrat,  fox, 
mink,  raccoon,  skunk,  and  opossum,  September  i  to  January  31.  Sale  of  these  animals  or 
their  skins  restricted  to  from  November  i  to  January  31. 

Dyer  County.  —  Open  season  for  raccoon,  mink,  and  otter,  October  i  to  February  15. 

Meigs  and  Rhea  Counties.  —  Same  provisions  about  foxes  as  in  Blount,  but  also  sale  of 
the  animals  or  their  pelts  is  prohibited. 

Smith  County.  —  Open  season  for  trapping  fur  animals,  October  15  to  February  15. 

Warren  County.  —  Open  season  for  opossum,  raccoon,  and  other  fur  animals,  November  I 
to  February  28  (29). 

TEXAS. 

Open  seasons.  —  No  close  season  for  fur  animals. 

Trapping.  —  No  license  required  for  trapping,  but  on  posted  lands  consent 
of  owner  is  necessary. 

Propagation.  —  Permit  must  be  obtained  from  game,  fish,  and  oyster  commis- 
sioner to  trap  or  transport  wild  animals  for  propagation  purposes. 

Bounties.  —  None  paid  by  State. 

UTAH. 

open  seasons.  —  Beaver,  otter,  and  marten  protected  at  all  times.  If  beavers 
destroy  property,  the  State  fish  and  game  commissioner  may  give  permit  to  kill, 
but  hides  must  be  delivered  to  the  commissioner  to  be  sold,  half  of  the  proceeds 
from  the  sale  of  skins  of  beaver  so  taken  to  be  paid  as  compensation  for  trapping 
the  animals,  the  balance  to  be  paid  into  the  game  fund ;  possession  of  skins  of 
protected  fur  animals  prohibited  unless  duly  tagged  by  commissioner.  No  close 
season  on  other  fur  animals. 

Trapping.  —  No  license  required  for  trapping.  Aliens  other  than  homesteaders 
are  not  allowed  to  hunt  or  trap  in  the  State. 

Propagation.  —  No  legislation. 

Bounties. — Wolf,  $62.50;  bear,  mountain  lion,  or  cougar,  $30;  coyote,  $4; 
lynx,  or  bobcat,  $3.  Fund  raised  by  direct  appropriation  and  a  tax  of  4  mills  on 
live  stock. 

VERMONT. 

open  seasons.  —  Mink,  otter,  and  muskrat,  November  i  to  April  30;  marten, 
raccoon,  fisher,  and  skunk,  October  20  to  March  3 1 ;  fox,  October  20  to  April  1 
(may  be  taken  otherwise  than  by  trapping  at  any  time).  No  open  season  for 
beaver. 


1 78  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

Trapping.  —  License  is  required  for  trapping,  except  on  one's  own  land ;  fee, 
resident,  60  cents;  nonresident,  $10.50.  Persons  trapping  on  inclosed  lands  of 
another  must  inform  owner  of  location  of  traps  and  must  visit  traps  at  least  once 
in  24  hours.  The  use  of  spring  guns  is  prohibited,  and  bear  traps  must  be  care- 
fully safeguarded.  Skins  of  fur  animals  legally  taken  may  be  bought  or  sold  at  any 
time.  Unlawful  to  open  or  destroy  a  muskrat  house  or  to  place  a  trap  at  its 
entrance.  Unlawful  to  dig  skunks  from  dens  or  to  drive  them  out  by  use  of 
smoke  or  chemicals. 

Propagation.  —  The  State  fish  and  game  commissioner  issues  special  permits 
for  propagating  fur  and  game  animals  (fee,  $2  and  expense  of  tagging).  Animals 
bred  on  fur  farms  may  be  sold  and  transported  alive  at  all  times  when  bearing 
the  identification  tags  prescribed  by  the  commissioner. 

Bounties.  —  Black  bear  taken  between  May  i  and  November  i,  $10;  hedgehog 
(porcupine),  15  cents;  paid  by  State.  Towns  pay  $5  bounty  on  bay  lynx  or  bob- 
cat. 

Local  laws: 

Shores  of  Lake  Champlain  in  Rutland  County,  Poultney  River  below  Carvers  Falls,  and 
shores  of  Lake  Memphremagog  in  Orleans  County.  —  Open  season  for  mink,  muskrat,  or  otter, 
January  i  to  April  30. 

VIRGINIA. 

open  seasons.  —  (Applies  to  any  county  adopting  the  law.)  All  fur  animals 
on  lands  of  another,  noon  of  October  15  to  noon  of  January  15. 

Trapping.  —  The  following  applies  to  any  county  after  adoption  by  the  board 
of  supervisors  :  Trapping  for  fur  animals  on  lands  of  another  is  unlawful  except  from 
noon  of  October  15  to  noon  of  January  15,  and  then  is  lawful  only  with  written 
permission  of  landowner,  which  permission  the  trapper  must  have  on  his  person 
when  trapping.  He  must  visit  traps  at  least  once  in  36  hours  and  is  liable  for 
any  damage  such  traps  may  do  to  domestic  animals.  Landowner  may  trap  or 
kill  fur  animals  on  his  own  lands  at  any  time. 

Propagation.  —  License  required  (fee,  $25)  to  raise  game  or  fur  animals. 

Bounties.  —  Boards  of  supervisors  of  counties  are  authorized  to  pay  a  bounty 
of  50  cents  each  for  goshawk  and  cooper's  hawk. 

Local  trapping  regulations.  —  The  following  provisions  are  in  force : 

Culpeper  County.  —  Unlawful  in  Jefferson  magisterial  district  to  trap  foxes  except  in 
November  and  December.  Traps  set  for  foxes  must  be  visited  daily  to  release  any  dog  that 
may  be  caught.  i^p 

Fauquier  and  Loudoun  Counties.  —  Unlawful  to  take  foxes  April  i  to  August  31,  except 
by  owner  or  tenant  of  land  to  protect  property.  Unlawful  in  open  season  to  shoot,  trap,  or 
poison  foxes  except  on  written  authority  of  a  landowner. 


APPENDIX  TO  PART  I  179 

Fauquier  County.  —  Supervisors  may  pay  50  cents  bounty  on  goshawk  and  cooper's 
hawk,  from  surplus  derived  from  dog  tax. 

Halifax  County.  —  Opossum,  open  season,  October  15  to  January  31. 

King  George  County.  —  Muskrat,  open  season,  December  20  to  March  31. 

Loudoun  County.  —  License  (fee,  $2.50)  required  to  trap  mink,  muskrat,  skunk,  opos- 
sum, and  raccoon  on  lands  of  another.  Open  season  for  mink,  muskrat,  and  skunk,  Novem- 
ber I  to  February  29;  for  opossum  and  raccoon,  October  i  to  February  29. 

Nansemond  County.  —  Mink,  otter,  and  muskrat,  open  season,  January  i  to  March  31. 

Patrick  County.  —  Wild  raccoon  or  opossum,  open  season,  October  15  to  March  14; 
gray  fox,  September  15  to  March  14. 

Princess  Anne  County.  —  Unlawful  to  catch,  trap,  or  kill  mink,  muskrat,  or  otter  for 
profit,  except  from  November  i  to  March  14. 

Rappahannock  County.  —  Unlawful  to  trap  or  hunt  on  lands  of  another  without  written 
permit  from  owner. 

Rockingham  County.  —  Bounty  on  crows  authorized. 

Amherst,  Essex,  King  George,  and  Loudoun  Counties  are  authorized  to  pay  bounty  of  go 
cents  each  on  certain  hawks. 

WASHINGTON. 

Open  seasons.  —  Bear,  September  i  to  May  I ;  at  any  time  when  found  de- 
stroying domestic  animals  (1917,  ch.  164).  No  open  season  for  beaver.  No 
closed  season  for  other  fur  animals. 

Trapping.  —  Trapping  license  (fee,  ^5)  required.  No  steel  trap  larger  than 
No.  4  may  be  used  unless  a  notice  in  the  English  language  on  a  large  placard  is 
placed  above  the  trap ;  this  requirement  does  not  apply  to  trapping  coyotes,  musk- 
rats,  minks,  skunks,  martens,  civet  cats,  and  weasels. 

Propagation.  —  Breeder's  license  (fee,  $10;  renewal,  $5)  required. 

Bounties.  —  Mountain  lion  or  cougar,  $zo;  lynx  or  wildcat,  $5;  coyote,  $1; 
timber  wolf,  $15;  seal  or  sea  lion  in  Columbia  River  district,  $3;  paid  by  State. 
Counties  are  permitted  to  pay  additional  rewards  for  destroying  these  animals, 
and  also  bounties  on  bear,  muskrat,  and  squirrel. 

WEST   VIRGINIA. 

open  seasons.  —  Red  fox,  raccoon,  mink,  and  skunk,  November  i  to  February 
I.     Any  county  may  by  majority  vote  provide  a  perpetual  close  season  on  skunk. 

Trapping.  —  Hunting  license  is  required  for  trapping;  fee,  resident,  ^i ;  non- 
resident, $18.  An  owner  of  lands  or  his  agent  or  tenant  may  hunt  or  kill  pro- 
tected fur  animals  on  such  lands  at  any  time,  but  it  is  unlawful  to  set  or  maintain 
a  snare  or  trap  upon  lands  of  another  without  express  permission  of  owner  or  tenant. 
Unlawful  to  set  a  steel  or  spring  bear  trap  on  lands  of  another. 

Propagation.  —  No  restriction  on  possession  or  sale,  but  animals  may  not  be 
taken  for  breeding  purposes  in  close  season  except  on  lands  owned  or  tenanted  by 
the  breeder. 


i8o  THE  FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

Bounties.  —  Wildcat,  bobcat,  or  catamount,  $5 ;  crow,  10  cents;  certain  hawks 
and  owls,  25  cents ;  paid  from  forest,  game,  and  fish  protection  fund. 

WISCONSIN. 

Open  seasons.  —  Beaver  in  Price,  Rusk,  and  Sawyer  Counties,  February  i 
to  March  31  (1919  and  1920);  black  bear,  November  10  to  December  i;  fisher, 
marten,  mink,  and  skunk,  November  15  to  February  i;  raccoon,  October  15  to 
January  i  (except  Marathon  County,  August  15  to  January  i);  bag  limit  5  a 
day;  muskrat,  in  Polk,  Barron,  Rusk,  Price,  Lincoln,  Langlade,  Forest,  Mari- 
nette, Florence,  Iron,  Oneida,  Vilas,  Ashland,  Washburn,  Sawyer,  Burnett,  Douglas, 
and  Bayfield  Counties,  October  25  to  April  20;  in  Calumet,  Manitowoc,  and 
Sheboygan  Counties,  March  i  to  April  15;  in  remainder  of  State,  October  25  to 
April  10. 

Trapping. — License  required  for  trapping;  fee,  resident,  $1;  nonresident, 
$25  ;  report  required  from  Hcensed  trapper.  Unlawful  to  take  fisher,  marten,  mink, 
or  muskrat  with  the  aid  of  spear,  gun,  or  dog;  to  take  rabbit  with  ferret;  to 
disturb  or  molest  muskrat  houses,  or  beaver  houses  or  beaver  dams,  or  raccoon 
den  trees  for  the  purpose  of  capturing  raccoons ;  or  to  set  traps  within  500  feet  of 
any  beaver  dam  or  beaver  house.  Steel  traps  may  be  used  for  taking  fur  animals 
in  open  season.  The  possession  of  green  skins  of  any  fur-bearing  animal  during 
close  season  is  unlawful,  as  is  also  the  possession  at  any  time  of  the  skin  of  a  fisher, 
marten,  mink,  or  muskrat  which  shows  that  the  animal  had  been  shot  or  speared. 

Owners  or  lessees  of  dams  may  at  any  time  destroy  muskrats  to  protect 
such  dams  or  levees,  but  they  may  not  sell,  barter,  or  give  away  the  skins  of  such 
animals  killed  during  close  season. 

Beavers  and  otters  are  protected  at  all  times  except  beavers  in  3  counties. 
If  beavers  damage  property,  they  may  be  captured  and  removed  under  the  direc- 
tion of  the  State  conservation  commission. 

Propagation.  —  Under  permit  and  supervision  of  the  commission  wild  animals 
may  be  taken  and  transported  for  propagation  within  the  State.  Special  license 
required  for  muskrat  farming  (fee,  $5,  and  I  cent  per  acre  for  all  premises  in  excess 
of  500  acres  covered  by  the  license). 

Bounties.  — Wolf  cub  taken  between  March  i  and  November  i,  $4;  mature 
wolf  killed  at  any  time,  ^10;  fox,  $2;  paid  by  county.  County  boards  may  in- 
crease these  rewards,  but  no  county  may  pay  more  than  $6  for  killing  a  wolf  cub. 
The  State  treasurer  duplicates  all  county  awards,  thus  doubling  the  above  bounties. 
Poisons  may  be  used  for  destroying  animals  for  bounty  between  December  i  and 
March  i,  but  notice  of  putting  out  baits  must  be  posted,  and  they  may  not  be 
placed  within  80  rods  of  a  dwelling  house.     County  boards  may  offer  bounty  on 


APPENDIX  TO  PART  I  i8i 

crow,  hen  hawk,  pocket  gopher,  streaked  gopher,  English  sparrow,  blackbird,  or 
rattlesnake. 

WYOMING. 

Open  seasons.  —  No  close  season  on  fur-bearing  animals  except  beavers,  which 
may  not  be  taken  at  any  time  until  March  15,  1925,  but  if  they  damage  real  estate 
the  owner  may  destroy  them  upon  making  affidavit  to  State  game  warden.  Skins 
of  beaver  so  taken  may  be  possessed  when  duly  tagged  by  warden. 

Trapping.  —  Unlawful  to  trap  game  animals  or  birds  or  to  use  their  flesh  as 
trap  bait  for  predatory  animals.  Unlawful  to  trap  on  State  game  preserves  with- 
out permit  (fee,  $3),  and  for  anyone  not  employed  by  the  United  States  Depart- 
ment of  Agriculture  to  trap  in  national  forests  within  the  State  without  first  ob- 
taining a  permit  (fee,  ^3)  from  the  State  game  warden.  Nonresident  of  State  must 
secure  a  special  license  (fee,  $10)  to  hunt,  pursue,  or  kill  bears,  but  bears  may  not 
be  trapped  under  this  license.  Dog  license  (fee,  $1  for  each  dog)  required  for 
hunting  predatory  animals  on  national  forests  during  close  season  on  big  game. 

Propagation.  —  No  legislation. 

Bounties.  —  None  paid  by  State. 

Laws  of  Canada. 

ALBERTA. 

Open  seasons.  —  Mink,  fisher,  and  marten,  November  i  to  March  31 ;  otter  and 
muskrat,  November  i  to  April  30.  No  open  season  for  beaver  until  December 
31,  1920,  unless  locally  by  order  of  the  lieutenant  governor  in  council. 

Trapping.  —  Nonresident  requires  license  to  trap;  fee,  $25.  Unlawful  to  use 
poison  for  taking  fur-bearing  animals;  to  destroy,  partially  destroy,  or  leave 
open  any  muskrat  or  beaver  house;  or  to  destroy  a  beaver  dam,  unless  author- 
ized to  do  so  by  the  lieutenant  governor  in  council,  who  may  also  authorize  the 
killing  of  beavers  or  other  fur  animals  when  such  killing  is  deemed  to  be  in  the 
public  interest.  Export  of  unprime  skins  or  pelts  is  forbidden,  unless  by  permit 
from  the  minister  of  agriculture.  No  fox  may  be  trapped  or  taken  alive  for  export. 
Every  company,  firm,  or  person  engaged  in  the  fur  trade  must  make  annual  returns 
of  the  number  of  skins  bought  or  sold. 

Propagation.  —  Manager  of  fur  farm  required  to  make  reports  January  i  and 
July  I  of  each  year.  Export  of  live  animals  from  fur  farms  allowed  only  on  permit 
from  the  minister  of  agriculture.  Permit,  with  fees,  required  to  export  live  musk- 
rats,  minks,  fishers,  martens,  otters,  or  beavers,  whether  raised  on  a  fur  farm  or 
otherwise  (orders  in  council). 

Bounties.  —  The  council  of  any  rural  municipality  is  authorized  to  oflFer  a 
bounty  on  wolves. 


i82  THE  FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

BRITISH    COLUMBIA. 

Open  seasons.  —  Bear,  September  i  to  June  30,  except  that  bear  may  not  be 
trapped  in  that  part  of  the  Province  lying  south  of  the  main  Hne  of  the  Canadian 
Pacific  Railway;  fox,  November  i  to  March  15;  beaver,  no  open  season;  all 
other  fur  animals,  November  i  to  April  30.  (See  regulations  of  lieutenant  governor 
in  council,  dated  Aug.  7,  1919,  which  may  be  obtained  from  secretary,  game  con- 
servation board,  Victoria,  British  Columbia.) 

Trapping.  —  License  required  to  trap  off  one's  own  lands ;  fee,  resident  only, 
$10.  A  licensed  trapper  who  first  occupies  a  trap  line  prior  to  November  14 
is  protected  against  other  trappers.  License  must  be  returned  within  two  months 
after  it  expires,  with  a  statement  of  number  of  fur  animals  of  each  kind  taken. 
It  is  unlawful  to  touch  or  interfere  with  traps  set  by  a  licensed  trapper,  to  trap  on 
enclosed  or  cultivated  land  without  permission  of  owner,  or  to  permit  traps  to  re- 
main set  after  close  of  season.  Possession  or  export  of  pelts  is  allowed  only  during 
open  season  and  for  two  months  thereafter  (three  months,  north  of  fifty-second 
parallel),  except  by  special  permit.  Special  license  to  hunt  bears  from  January  i 
to  July  I  (fee,  $25,  and  additional  fee  of  $15  to  $25  for  each  bear  killed)  is  required 
of  a  nonresident. 

Propagation.  —  A  permit  to  propagate  fur-bearing  animals  is  required.  Breeder 
must  keep  a  record  of  transactions  as  to  purchases  and  sales  of  stock,  which 
record  must  be  open  to  inspection  of  any  game  warden.  Live  foxes  may  be  exported 
only  under  permit.  Permit  is  required  to  take  foxes  or  other  fur  animals  in  close 
season. 

Bounties.  —  Rates  fixed  from  time  to  time  by  lieutenant  governor  in  council. 

MANITOBA. 

Open  seasons.  —  South  of  fifty-third  parallel:  Fisher,  pekan,  sable,  marten, 
and  mink,  November  i  to  March  3 1 ;  otter  and  beaver,  no  open  season ;  fox  and 
lynx,  no  close  season.  North  of  fifty-third  parallel:  Fisher,  pekan,  sable,  marten, 
and  mink,  November  i  to  March  31;  otter  and  beaver,  November  i  to  April  30; 
fox  and  lynx,  November  i  to  February  29. 

Muskrat,  south  of  fifty-first  parallel:  March  I  to  May  15;  north  of  fifty-first 
parallel:  October  20  to  November  30,  and  March  i  to  May  15.  Unlawful  to  shoot 
or  spear  muskrats. 

Trapping.  —  A  license  is  required  to  trap ;  fee,  resident,  $2 ;  nonresident,  Cana- 
dian citizen,  $25 ;  nonresident,  alien,  $100.  Report  giving  number  of  animals 
of  each  kind  taken  under  license  is  required  to  be  made  between  June  i  and  July  i. 
Persons  trading  in  furs  must  be  licensed  (fee,  resident,  $10;  nonresident,  $50) 
and  are  required  to  make  annual  returns  before  September  30.  Unlawful  to  trap 
in  Provincial  game  preserves,  to  trap  on  cultivated  or  enclosed  lands  without  per- 


APPENDIX  TO  PART  I  183 

mission  of  owner,  to  destroy  a  muskrat  or  beaver  house,  to  use  poison  in  taking 
fur  animals,  or  to  export  unprime  skins.  Poison  may  not  be  used  to  capture  wolves 
for  bounty. 

Propagation.  —  No  legal  restrictions  except  that  a  special  permit  must  be 
obtained  to  export  live  fur  animals;  fee  for  black  or  silver  fox,  $ioo;  for  other  fox, 
$15;  for  live  otter,  $25;  for  any  other  fur  animal,  $5. 

Bounties.  —  Timber  wolf,  $5 ;  other  wolf,  $2 ;  half  is  refunded  to  municipality 
by  the  Provincial  treasurer. 

NEW    BRUNSWICK. 

Open  seasons.  —  Mink,  otter,  and  fisher,  November  i  to  March  3 1 ;  fox, 
October  i  to  March  i ;  muskrat,  noon  of  March  25  to  noon  of  May  15.  Beaver 
and  sable,  close  season  to  July  i,  1920.  The  Minister  of  Lands  and  Mines,  when 
satisfied  that  a  number  of  beavers  may  be  taken  from  any  stream  without  injury 
to  the  supply,  may  issue  a  special  license  accompanied  by  necessary  tags,  for  taking 
them ;  fee,  $4.  for  each  animal. 

Trapping.  —  Nonresidents  require  a  license  (fee,  $25)  for  trapping.  A  license 
is  also  required  to  deal  in,  buy,  sell,  cure,  or  tan  the  skin  of  fur-bearing  animals 
(fees,  nonresident,  $25  ;  resident,  $2).  The  digging  out  of  foxes  from  their  homes 
or  earth  burrows  is  prohibited  at  all  times.  Unlawful  to  possess  green  skins  or 
carcasses  of  protected  fur  animals  in  close  season. 

Propagation.  —  Permits  to  capture  wild  fur-bearing  animals  for  propagation 
within  the  Province  may  be  obtained  from  the  Minister  of  Lands  and  Mines, 
who  fixes  the  fee  for  such  permit. 

Bounties.  —  Wildcat  (killed  within  the  Province),  $^ ;  porcupine,  50  cents ; 
hawks  and  owls,  25  cents  each ;   paid  by  the  Minister  of  Lands  and  Mines. 

NORTH-WEST  TERRITORIES. 

Open  seasons.  —  Mink,  fisher,  and  marten,  November  I  to  March  14;  otter, 
beaver,  and  muskrat,  October  i  to  May  14;  white  fox,  November  15  to  March 
31.     Trapping  prohibited  on  Victoria  Island. 

Trapping.  —  License  required  of  all  trappers  except  native  Indians ;  fee, 
resident,  $2 ;  nonresident,  British  subject,  ^25  ;  other  nonresident,  $50.  Licensed 
trapper  may  sell  or  trade  the  skins  of  animals  he  has  legally  taken.  License  (fee, 
^5)  required  for  trading  or  trafficking  in  furs.  Unlawful  to  destroy  or  injure  any 
beaver  or  muskrat  house.  Use  of  poison  prohibited  in  taking  fur  animals.  Ex- 
port of  unprime  or  low-grade  furs  forbidden. 

Propagation.  —  Permits  may  be  obtained  to  take  live  fur  animals  for  prop- 
agation. 

Bounties.  —  Timber  wolf,  $20. 


i84  THE  FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 


NOVA    SCOTIA. 

Open  seasons.  —  No  open  season  for  beaver  or  marten.  Mink,  otter,  fox, 
raccoon,  muskrat,  and  all  other  fur-bearing  animals  (except  bear,  wolf,  and  wild- 
cat, which  are  not  protected),  November  i  to  January  31. 

Trapping.  —  Nonresident  requires  a  license  (fee,  $30)  to  take  fur-bearing 
animals,  which  are  included  in  the  term  "game."  Unlawful  to  take  any  pro- 
tected fur  animal  (unless  under  a  permit)  from  a  burrow  or  den  by  smoking  or 
digging;  to  take  fur  animal  by  use  of  poison;  to  damage  or  molest  a  beaver 
dam  or  house,  or  a  muskrat  house,  or  set  snare  or  trap  within  25  feet  of  the  latter; 
or  to  have  in  possession  the  green  hide  or  pelt  of  a  fur  animal  taken  out  of  season. 

Propagation.  —  Permits  to  take  wild  animals  may  be  obtained  from  the  board 
of  game  commissioners  under  such  restrictions  as  they  may  require.  Unlawful 
to  keep  fur-bearing  animals  in  captivity  for  breeding  purposes  without  a  permit 
from  the  chief  game  commissioner;  fee,  $2  for  each  kind  of  animal  kept,  payable 
annually.  Reports  are  required  annually  on  September  30.  Enclosures  for  fur 
animals  are  protected  from  trespass. 

Bounties.  —  None  paid. 

ONTARIO. 

Open  seasons.  —  Mink,  fisher,  and  marten,  November  i  to  April  30 ;  muskrat, 
north  of  French  and  Mattawa  Rivers,  April  i  to  May  20;  south  of  said  rivers, 
March  i  to  April  20.  Beavers  and  otters  may  be  taken  by  residents  of  the  Province 
only,  under  license  and  special  restrictions,  from  November  i  to  March  31. 

Trapping.  —  License  to  trap  required  except  to  take  wolf  and  fox  or  for  farmers 
and  their  sons  to  trap  on  own  land ;  fee,  resident,  $5  ;  nonresident,  $50.  License 
(fee  for  resident  and  British  subject,  $10;  for  alien,  $25)  is  required  of  all  fur  dealers 
or  traders.  Dealers  may  obtain  a  permit  to  hold  furs  during  close  season.  Pos- 
session of  unprime  skins  is  illegal.  Muskrats  may  not  be  shot  or  speared  at  any 
time.  Muskrat  houses  are  protected  at  all  times  except  when  the  animals  are 
injuring  property.  Beavers,  when  damaging  property,  may  be  destroyed  by 
game  overseer  under  special  authorization  from  the  department  of  game  and 
fisheries. 

Propagation.  —  A  permit  is  required  of  breeders  of  game  or  fur  animals. 
Licensed  fur  breeders  may  sell  live  animals  or  skins  during  open  season  upon  pay- 
ment of  royalties.  The  Minister  may  grant  permits  to  take  fur  animals  during 
the  close  season  for  propagating  and  scientific  purposes. 

Bounties.  —  Gray  timber  wolf,  $20 ;  other  wolf,  $5 ;  paid  by  county,  but 
Provincial  treasurer  refunds  40  per  cent  to  county.  Provincial  treasurer  pays 
entire  bounty  in  unorganized  counties. 


APPENDIX  TO  PART  I  185 

PRINCE   EDWARD   ISLAND. 

(1919  laws  not  received.) 

Open  seasons.  —  Marten,  mink,  muskrat,  and  otter,  November  i  to  March  31 ; 
beaver,  no  open  season,  and  the  animals  or  their  pelts  taken  in  the  Province  may 
not  be  sold. 

Trapping.  —  Nonresident  requires  license  (fee,  $50)  for  trapping.  Unlawful 
to  put  out  poisoned  baits  for  foxes  or  other  animals. 

Propagation.  —  Several  special  acts  of  the  Provincial  legislature  regulate  fox 
ranching  on  the  island.  The  animals  are  assessed  for  taxation;  ranches  are  pro- 
tected from  trespass,  under  heavy  penalties ;   and  incomes  from  ranches  are  taxed. 

Bounties.  —  None  paid. 

SASKATCHEWAN. 

open  seasons.  —  Mink,  fisher,  and  marten,  November  i  to  March  3 1 ;  otter 
and  muskrat,  November  i  to  April  30;  fox,  north  of  township  50,  November  i  to 
March  3 1 ;  beaver,  December  i  to  April  30  (except  on  game  preserves  and  where 
protected  by  municipality). 

Trapping.  —  Nonresident  requires  license  (fee,  $25)  to  trap.  Unlawful  to 
trap  on  game  refuges  or  on  enclosed  or  cultivated  lands  of  another  without  consent 
of  owner  or  occupant;  to  use  poison  for  taking  fur  animals;  to  spear  or  shoot 
muskrats,  or  to  destroy  muskrat  houses;  to  buy,  sell,  ship,  or  possess  unprime 
furs ;  to  buy  or  sell  furs  without  license  (fees :  residents  north  of  township  25, 
$10;  south  of  township  26,  $2 ;  nonresidents,  $25) ;  and  to  ship  any  fur  animal  in 
concealed  receptacle.     Licensed  fur  traders  must  make  annual  report  of  operations. 

Propagation.  —  Permit  required  (fee,  $1  annually)  to  operate  a  fur  ranch. 
Permit  to  ship  live  fur  animals  is  required ;  fee,  for  black  or  silver  fox,  $25 ;  for  cross 
or  red  fox,  ^5 ;  for  other  fur  animal,  $5.  Young  foxes  may  not  be  taken  from  dens 
before  May  15. 

Bounties.  —  Adult  timber  wolf,  $10;  pups  of  prairies  or  timber  wolf,  $i\ 
paid  only  in  properly  gazetted  wolf  districts,  when  half  is  refunded  from  Provincial 
treasury. 

QUEBEC. 

Open  seasons.  —  Mink,  otter,  marten,  fisher  (pekan),  raccoon,  skunk,  or  any 
other  fur-bearing  animal  not  excepted  in  this  article,  November  i  to  March  3 1 ; 
beaver,  November  i  to  March  31 ;  muskrat,  March  15  to  April  30;  fox,  Novem- 
ber I  to  February  29 ;  bear,  August  20  to  June  30. 

Trapping.  —  Use  of  poisons  in  taking  fur  animals  prohibited.  Reports  are 
required  of  all  persons  engaged  in  the  fur  trade  (buying,  selling,  or  taking  fur 


1 86  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

animals)  before  September  i  of  each  year.  Royalties  must  be  paid  on  fur  animals 
or  furs  shipped  out  of  the  Province. 

Propagation.  —  The  minister  of  colonization,  mines,  and  fisheries  may  grant 
permits  to  take  animals  alive  for  breeding  purposes;  nonresidents  are  charged  a 
fee  of  from  ^5  to  ^25  for  such  license. 

Bounties.  — Wolf,  $15. 

YUKON. 

open  seasons.  —  Beaver  protected  at  all  seasons.  No  close  season  for  other 
fur  animals,  except  young  foxes;  these  may  not  be  taken  from  April  i  to  May  31. 
Unlawful  to  export  raw  furs  from  territory  except  under  permit  issued  by  direction 
of  the  commissioner,  and  upon  payment  of  the  export  tax. 

Trapping.  —  Use  of  poison  in  taking  animals  forbidden. 

Propagation.  —  No  restrictions  other  than  as  to  foxes.  Registration  of  fox 
breeders  required.  Unlawful  to  export  a  fox  not  born  in  captivity  or  which  has  been 
in  captivity  for  less  than  a  year;  any  fox  born  in  captivity  may  be  exported  under 
a  permit  (fee,  $5).  Fox  and  other  fur  ranches,  if  posted  against  trespass,  may 
not  be  approached  without  owner's  consent. 

Bounties.  —  None  paid. 

Laws  of  Newfoundland. 

Open  seasons.  —  Otter,  marten,  and  lynx,  October  i  to  March  3 1 ;  fox,  October 
16  to  March  14;  muskrat,  October  i  to  April  30.  No  open  season  for  beaver  until 
October  i,  1920. 

Trapping.  —  Nonresident  trappers  require  annual  license;  fee,  $501.  Fur 
buyers  and  shippers  also  require  annual  license  (fee,  50  cents),  and  must  report 
operations  under  same  before  December  31  of  each  year.  Trapping  on  Grand  Lake 
Caribou  Preserve  is  unlawful  at  all  times. 

Propagation.  —  No  restrictions,  except  as  to  foxes.  A  fox  farm  must  be 
licensed;  the  owner  must  at  stated  times  make  reports  to  the  game  and  inland 
fisheries  board,  and  the  premises  must  be  at  all  times  open  to  inspection  by  officers 
of  the  board.  Possession  of  fox  cub  or  fox  taken  in  close  season  is  prohibited. 
Unlawful  to  export  a  fox  not  bred  on  a  fox  farm,  or,  without  permit  from  the  colonial 
board,  to  export  a  fox  bred  in  captivity. 

Bounties.  —  None  paid. 


PART  II 


CHAPTER  I 
THE  TAKING  OF  THE  BEAVER 

All  summer  long  he  had  hung  about  the  fur  company  trading- 
posts  waiting  for  the  signs. 

And  now  the  signs  had  come. 

FoHage  crimson  to  the  touch  of  night-frosts.  Crisp  autumn  days, 
spicy  with  the  smell  of  nuts  and  dead  leaves.  Birds  flying  away 
southward,  leaving  the  woods  silent  as  the  snow-padded  surface  of 
a  frozen  pond.  Hoar-frost  heavier  every  morning ;  and  thin 
ice  edged  round  stagnant  pools  like  layers  of  mica. 

Then  he  knew  it  was  time  to  go.  And  through  the  Northern 
forests  moved  a  new  presence  —  the  trapper. 

Of  the  tawdry,  flash  clothing  in  which  popular  fancy  is  wont  to 
dress  him  he  has  none.  Bright  colors  would  be  a  danger-signal 
to  game.  If  his  costume  has  any  color,  it  is  a  waist-belt  or  neck- 
scarf,  a  toque  or  bright  handkerchief  round  his  head  to  keep  dis- 
tant hunters  from  mistaking  him  for  a  moose.  For  the  rest,  his 
clothes  are  as  ragged  as  any  old,  weather-worn  garments.  Sleeping 
on  balsam  boughs  or  cooking  over  a  smoky  fire  will  reduce  the  new- 
ness of  blanket  coat  and  buckskin  jacket  to  the  dun  shades  of  the 
grizzled  forest.  A  few  days  in  the  open  and  the  trapper  has  the 
complexion  of  a  bronzed  tree-trunk. 

Like  other  wild  creatures,  this  foster-child  of  the  forest  gradually 
takes  on  the  appearance  and  habits  of  woodland  life.  Nature  pro- 
tects the  ermine  by  turning  his  russet  coat  of  the  grass  season  to 
spotless  white  for  midwinter  —  except  the  jet  tail-tip  left  to  lure 
hungry  enemies  and  thus,  perhaps,  to  prevent  the  little  stoat 
degenerating  into  a  sloth.     And  the  forest  looks  after  her  foster- 

189 


I90  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

child  by  transforming  the  smartest  suit  that  ever  stepped  out  of 
the  clothier's  bandbox  to  the  dull  tints  of  winter  woods. 

This  is  the  seasoning  of  the  man  for  the  work.  But  the  trapper's 
training  does  not  stop  here. 

When  the  birds  have  gone  South  the  silence  of  a  winter  forest 
on  a  windless  day  becomes  tense  enough  to  be  snapped  by  either  a 
man's  breathing  or  the  breaking  of  a  small  twig ;  and  the  trapper 
acquires  a  habit  of  moving  through  the  brush  with  noiseless  stealth. 
He  must  learn  to  see  better  than  the  caribou  can  hear  or  the  wolf 
smell  —  which  means  that  in  keenness  and  accuracy  his  sight  out- 
distances the  average  field-glass.  Besides,  the  trapper  has  learned 
how  to  look,  how  to  see,  and  seeing  —  discern ;  which  the  average 
man  cannot  do  even  through  a  field-glass.  Then  animals  have 
a  trick  of  deceiving  the  enemy  into  mistaking  them  for  Inanimate 
things  by  suddenly  standing  stock-still  in  closest  peril,  unflinching 
as  stone ;  and  to  match  himself  against  them  the  trapper  must 
also  get  the  knack  of  Instantaneously  becoming  a  statue,  though  he 
feel  the  clutch  of  bruin's  five-inch  claws. 

And  these  things  are  only  the  ah  c  oi  the  trapper's  woodcraft. 

One  of  the  best  hunters  in  America  confessed  that  the  longer 
he  trapped  the  more  he  thought  every  animal  different  enough  from 
the  fellows  of  its  kind  to  be  a  species  by  itself.  Each  day  was  a 
fresh  page  in  the  book  of  forest  lore. 

It  Is  in  the  month  of  May-goosey-geezee,  the  Ojibways'  trout 
month,  corresponding  to  the  late  October  and  early  November 
of  the  white  man,  that  the  trapper  sets  out  through  the  illimitable 
stretches  of  the  forest  land  and  waste  prairie  south  of  Hudson 
Bay,  between  Labrador  and  the  Upper  Missouri. 

His  birch  canoe  has  been  made  during  the  summer.  Now, 
splits  and  seams,  where  the  bark  crinkles  at  the  gunwale,  must 
be  filled  with  rosin  and  pitch.  A  Hght  sled,  with  only  runners  and 
cross  frame,  is  made  to  haul  the  canoe  over  still  water,  where  the 
ice  first  forms.  Sled,  provisions,  blanket,  and  fish-net  are  put  in 
the  canoe,  not  forgetting  the  most  important  part  of  his  kit  —  the 


THE  TAKING  OF  THE   BEAVER  191 

trapper's  tools.  Whether  he  hunts  from  point  to  point  all  winter, 
travelling  light  and  taking  nothing  but  absolute  necessaries,  or 
builds  a  central  lodge,  where  he  leaves  full  store  and  radiates  out 
to  the  hunting-grounds,  at  least  four  things  must  be  in  his  tool- 
bag  :  a  woodman's  axe ;  a  gimlet  to  bore  holes  in  his  snow-shoe 
frame ;  a  crooked  knife  —  not  the  sheathed  dagger  of  fiction,  but 
a  blade  crooked  hook-shape,  somewhat  like  a  farrier's  knife,  at  one 
end  —  to  smooth  without  splintering,  as  a  carpenter's  plane ;  and 
a  small  chisel  to  use  on  the  snow-shoe  frames  and  wooden  con- 
trivances that  stretch  the  pelts. 

If  accompanied  by  a  boy,  who  carries  half  the  pack,  the  hunter 
may  take  more  tools ;  but  the  old  trapper  prefers  to  travel  light. 
Firearms,  ammunition,  a  common  hunting-knife,  steel  traps,  a 
cotton-factory  tepee,  a  large  sheet  of  canvas,  locally  known  as 
abuckwan,  for  a  shed  tent,  complete  the  trapper's  equipment.  His 
dog  is  not  part  of  the  equipment :  it  is  fellow-hunter  and  com- 
panion. 

From  the  moose  must  come  the  heavy  filling  for  the  snow-shoes  ; 
but  the  snow-shoes  will  not  be  needed  for  a  month,  and  there  is  no 
haste  about  shooting  an  unfound  moose  while  mink  and  muskrat 
and  otter  and  beaver  are  waiting  to  be  trapped.  With  the  dog 
showing  his  wisdom  by  sitting  motionless  as  an  Indian  bowman, 
the  trapper  steps  into  his  canoe  and  pushes  out. 

Eye  and  ear  alert  for  sign  of  game  or  feeding-place,  where  traps 
would  be  effective,  the  man  paddles  silently  on.  If  he  travels 
after  nightfall,  the  chances  are  his  craft  will  steal  unawares  close 
to  a  black  head  above  a  swimming  body.  With  both  wind  and 
current  meeting  the  canoe,  no  suspicion  of  his  presence  catches 
the  scent  of  the  sharp-nosed  swimmer.  Otter  or  beaver,  it  is 
shot  from  the  canoe.  With  a  leap  over  bow  or  stern  —  over  his 
master's  shoulder  if  necessary,  but  never  sideways,  lest  the  re- 
bound cause  an  upset  —  the  dog  brings  back  his  quarry.  But 
this  is  only  an  aside,  the  haphazard  shot  of  an  amateur  hunter, 
not  the  sort  of  trapping  that  fills  the  company's  lofts  with  fur  bales. 


192  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

While  ranging  the  forest  the  former  season  the  trapper  picked 
out  a  large  birch-tree,  free  of  knots  and  underbranching,  with  the 
full  girth  to  make  the  body  of  a  canoe  from  gunwale  to  gunwale 
without  any  gussets  and  seams.  But  birch-bark  does  not  peel 
well  in  winter.  The  trapper  scratched  the  trunk  with  a  mark  of 
"first-finder-first-owner,"  honored  by  all  hunters;  and  came 
back  in  the  summer  for  the  bark> 

Perhaps  it  was  while  taking  the  bark  from  this  tree  that  he  first 
noticed  the  traces  of  beaver.  Channels,  broader  than  runnels, 
hardly  as  wide  as  a  ditch,  have  been  cut  connecting  pool  with  pool, 
marsh  with  lake.  Here  are  runways  through  the  grass,  where 
beaver  have  dragged  young  saplings  five  times  their  own  length 
to  a  winter  storehouse  near  the  dam.  Trees  lie  felled  miles  away 
from  any  chopper.  Chips  are  scattered  about  marked  by  teeth 
which  the  trapper  knows  —  knows,  perhaps,  from  having  seen 
his  dog's  tail  taken  off  at  a  nip,  or  his  own  finger  amputated  almost 
before  he  felt  it.  If  the  bark  of  a  tree  has  been  nibbled  around, 
like  the  line  a  chopper  might  make  before  cutting,  the  trapper 
guesses  whether  his  coming  has  not  interrupted  a  beaver  in  the 
very  act. 

All  these  are  signs  which  spell  out  the  presence  of  a  beaver-dam 
within  one  night's  travelling  distance;  for  the  timid  beaver  fre- 
quently works  at  night,  and  will  not  go  so  far  away  that  forage 
cannot  be  brought  in  before  daylight.  In  which  of  the  hundred 
water-ways  in  the  labyrinth  of  pond  and  stream  where  beavers 
roam  is  this  particular  family  to  be  found  ^ 

Realizing  that  his  own  Hfe  depends  on  the  life  of  the  game,  no 
true  trapper  will  destroy  wild  creatures  when  the  mothers  are 
caring  for  their  young.  Besides,  furs  are  not  at  their  prime  when 
birch-bark  is  peeled,  and  the  trapper  notes  the  place,  so  that  he 
may  come  back  when  the  fall  hunt  begins.  Beaver  kittens  stay 
under  the  parental  roof  for  three  years,  but  at  the  end  of  the  first 
summer  are  amply  able  to  look  after  their  own  skins.  Free  from 
nursery  duties,  the  old  ones  can  now  use  all  the  ingenuity  and  craft 


^ 


Wolverine. 


Courtesy  Hudson  Bay  Company. 


THE  TAKING  OF  THE   BEAVER  193 

which  nature  gave  them  for  self-protection.  When  cold  weather 
comes  the  beaver  is  fair  game  to  the  trapper.  It  is  wit  against 
wit.  To  be  sure,  the  man  has  superior  strength,  a  gun,  and  a 
treacherous  thing  called  a  trap.  But  his  eyes  are  not  equal  to  the 
beaver's  nose.  And  he  hasn't  that  familiarity  with  the  woods 
to  enable  him  to  pursue,  which  the  beaver  has  to  enable  it  to  escape. 
And  he  can't  swim  long  enough  under  water  to  throw  enemies  off 
the  scent,  the  way  the  beaver  does. 

Now,  as  he  paddles  along  the  network  of  streams  which  interlace 
Northern  forests,  he  will  hardly  be  likely  to  stumble  on  the  beaver- 
dam  of  last  summer.  Beavers  do  not  build  their  houses  where 
passers-by  will  stumble  upon  them.  But  all  the  streams  have  been 
swollen  by  fall  rains ;  and  the  trapper  notices  the  markings  on 
every  chip  and  pole  floating  down  the  full  current.  A  chip  swirls 
past  white  and  fresh  cut.  He  knows  that  the  rains  have  floated  it 
over  the  beaver-dam.  Beavers  never  cut  below  their  houses,  but 
always  above,  so  that  the  current  will  carry  the  poles  downstream 
to  the  dam. 

Leaving  his  canoe-load  behind,  the  trapper  guardedly  advances 
within  sight  of  the  dam.  If  any  old  beaver  sentinel  be  swimming 
about,  he  quickly  scents  the  man-smell,  upends  and  dives  with  a 
spanking  blow  of  his  trowel  tail  on  the  water,  which  heUographs 
danger  to  the  whole  community.  He  swims  with  his  webbed  hind 
feet,  the  little  fore  paws  being  used  as  carriers  or  hanging  limply, 
the  flat  tail  acting  the  faintest  bit  in  the  world  like  a  rudder ;  but 
that  is  a  mooted  question.  The  only  definitely  ascertained  function 
of  that  bat-shaped  appendage  is  to  telegraph  danger  to  comrades. 
The  beaver  neither  carries  things  on  his  tail,  nor  plasters  houses 
with  it ;  for  the  simple  reason  that  the  joints  of  his  caudal  appurte- 
nance admit  of  only  slight  sidelong  wigglings  and  a  forward  sweep 
between  his  hind  legs,  as  if  he  might  use  it  as  a  tray  for  food  while 
he  sat  back  spooning  up  mouthfuls  with  his  fore  paws. 

Having  found  the  wattled  homes  of  the  beaver,  the  trapper  may 
proceed  in  different  ways.     He  may,  after  the  fashion  of  the  Indian 


194  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

hunter,  stake  the  stream  across  above  the  dam,  cut  away  the 
obstruction,  lowering  the  water,  break  the  conical  crowns  of  the 
houses  on  the  south  side,  which  is  thinnest,  and  slaughter  the 
beavers  indiscriminately  as  they  rush  out.  But  such  hunting 
kills  the  goose  that  lays  the  golden  egg;  and  explains  why  it  was 
necessary  to  prohibit  the  killing  of  beaver  for  some  years.  In  the 
confusion  of  a  wild  scramble  to  escape  and  a  blind  clubbing  of  heads 
there  was  bootless  destruction.  Old  and  young,  poor  and  in  prime, 
suffered  the  same  fate.  The  house  had  been  destroyed ;  and  if 
one  beaver  chanced  to  escape  into  some  of  the  bank-holes  under 
water  or  up  the  side  channels,  he  could  be  depended  upon  to  warn 
all  beaver  from  that  country.  Only  the  degenerate  white  man 
practises  bad  hunting. 

The  skilled  hunter  has  other  methods. 

If  unstripped  saplings  be  yet  about  the  bank  of  the  stream,  the 
beavers  have  not  finished  laying  up  their  winter  stores  in  adjacent 
pools.  The  trapper  gets  one  of  his  steel  traps.  Attaching  the 
ring  of  this  to  a  loose  trunk  heavy  enough  to  hold  the  beaver  down 
and  drown  him,  he  places  the  trap  a  few  inches  under  water  at  the 
end  of  a  runway  or  in  one  of  the  channels.  He  then  takes  out  a 
bottle  of  castoreum.  This  is  a  substance  from  the  glands  of  a 
beaver  which  destroys  all  traces  of  the  man-smell.  For  it  the 
beavers  have  a  curious  infatuation,  licking  everything  touched  by 
it,  and  said,  by  some  hunters,  to  be  drugged  into  a  crazy  stupidity 
by  the  very  smell.     The  hunter  daubs  this  on  his  own  foot-tracks. 

Or,  if  he  finds  tracks  of  the  beaver  in  the  grass  back  from  the 
bank,  he  may  build  an  old-fashioned  deadfall,  with  which  the 
beaver  is  still  taken  in  Labrador.  This  is  the  small  lean-to,  with  a 
roof  of  branches  and  bark  —  usually  covered  with  snow  —  slanting 
to  the  ground  on  one  side,  the  ends  either  posts  or  logs,  and  the 
front  an  opening  between  two  logs  wide  enough  to  admit  half  the 
animal's  body.  Inside,  at  the  back,  on  a  rectangular  stick,  one 
part  of  which  bolsters  up  the  front  log,  is  the  bait.  All  traces  of 
the  hunter  are  smeared  over  with  the  elusive  castoreum.     One  tug 


THE  TAKING  OF  THE   BEAVER  195 

at  the  bait  usually  brings  the  front  log  crashing  down  across  the 
animal's  back,  killing  it  instantly. 

But  neither  the  steel  trap  nor  the  deadfall  is  wholly  satisfactory. 
When  the  poor  beaver  comes  sniffing  along  the  castoreum  trail 
to  the  steel  trap  and  on  the  first  splash  into  the  water  feels  a  pair  of 
iron  jaws  close  on  his  feet,  he  dives  below  to  try  to  gain  the  shelter 
of  his  house.  The  log  plunges  after  him,  holding  him  down  and 
back  till  he  drowns ;  and  his  whereabouts  is  revealed  by  the  up- 
end of  the  tree. 

But  several  chances  are  in  the  beaver's  favor.  With  the  casto- 
reum licks,  which  tell  them  of  some  other  beaver,  perhaps  looking 
for  a  mate  or  lost  cub,  they  may  become  so  exhilarated  as  to  jump 
clear  of  the  trap.  Or,  instead  of  diving  down  with  the  trap,  they 
may  retreat  back  up  the  bank  and  amputate  the  imprisoned  foot 
with  one  nip,  leaving  only  a  mutilated  paw  for  the  hunter.  With 
the  deadfall  a  small  beaver  may  have  gone  entirely  inside  the  snare 
before  the  front  log  falls ;  and  an  animal  whose  teeth  saw  through 
logs  eighteen  inches  in  diameter  in  less  than  half  an  hour  can  easily 
eat  a  way  of  escape  from  a  wooden  trap.  Other  things  are  against 
the  hunter.  A  wolverine  may  arrive  on  the  scene  before  the  trapper 
and  eat  the  finest  beaver  ever  taken ;  or  the  trapper  may  discover 
that  his  victim  is  a  poor  little  beaver  with  worthless,  ragged  fur, 
which  should  have  been  left  to  forage  for  three  or  four  years. 

All  these  risks  can  be  avoided  by  waiting  till  the  ice  is  thick 
enough  for  the  trapper  to  cut  trenches.  Then  he  returns  with  a 
woodman's  axe  and  his  dog.  By  sounding  the  ice,  he  can  usually 
find  where  holes  have  been  hollowed  out  of  the  banks.  Here  he 
drives  stakes  to  prevent  the  beaver  taking  refuge  in  the  shore  vaults. 
The  runways  and  channels,  where  the  beaver  have  dragged  trees, 
may  be  hidden  in  snow  and  iced  over;  but  the  man  and  his  dog 
will  presently  find  them. 

The  beaver  always  chooses  a  stream  deep  enough  not  to  be 
frozen  solid,  and  shallow  enough  for  it  to  make  a  mud  foundation 
for  the  house  without  too  much  work.     Besides,  in  a  deep,  swift 


196  THE   FUR  TRADE   OF  AMERICA 

stream,  rains  would  carry  away  any  house  the  beaver  could  build. 
A  trench  across  the  upper  stream  or  stakes  through  the  ice  prevent 
escape  that  way. 

The  trapper  then  cuts  a  hole  in  the  dam.  Falling  water  warns 
the  terrified  colony  that  an  enemy  is  near.  It  may  be  their  greatest 
foe,  the  wolverine,  whose  claws  will  rip  through  the  frost-hard  wall 
as  easily  as  a  bear  delves  for  gophers;  but  their  land  enemies 
cannot  pursue  them  into  water ;  so  the  panic-stricken  family  — 
the  old  parents,  wise  from  many  such  alarms ;  the  young  three- 
year-olds,  who  were  to  go  out  and  rear  families  for  themselves  in 
the  spring ;  the  two-year-old  cubbies,  big  enough  to  be  saucy, 
young  enough  to  be  silly;  and  the  baby  kittens,  just  able  to  forage 
for  themselves  and  know  the  soft  alder  rind  from  the  tough  old 
bark  unpalatable  as  mud  —  pop  pell-mell  from  the  high  platform 
of  their  houses  into  the  water.  The  water  is  still  falling.  They 
will  presently  be  high  and  dry.  No  use  trying  to  escape  upstream. 
They  see  that  in  the  first  minute's  wild  scurry  through  the  shallows. 
Besides,  what's  this  across  the  creek  ?  Stakes,  not  put  there  by 
any  beaver ;  for  there  is  no  bark  on.  If  they  only  had  time  now 
they  might  cut  a  passage  through  ;  but  no  —  this  wretched  enemy, 
whatever  it  is,  has  ditched  the  ice  across. 

They  sniff^  and  listen.  A  terrible  sound  comes  from  above  —  a 
low,  exultant,  devilish  whining.  The  man  has  left  his  dog  on 
guard  above  the  dam.  At  that  the  little  beavers  —  always  trem- 
bling, timid  fellows  —  tumble  over  each  other  in  a  panic  of  fear 
to  escape  by  way  of  the  flowing  water  below  the  dam.  But  there 
a  new  terror  assails  them.  A  shadow  is  above  the  ice,  a  wraith  of 
destruction  —  the  figure  of  a  man  standing  at  the  dam  with  his 
axe  and  club  —  waiting. 

Where  to  go  now  ?  They  can't  find  their  bank  shelters,  for  the 
man  has  staked  them  up.  The  little  fellows  lose  their  presence 
of  mind  and  their  heads  and  their  courage,  and  with  a  blind  scramble 
dash  up  the  remaining  open  runway.  It  is  a  cul-de-sac.  But  what 
does  that  matter  t    They  run  almost  to  the  end.     They  can  crouch 


THE  TAKING  OF  THE   BEAVER  197 

there  till  the  awful  shadow  goes  away.  Exactly.  That  is  what 
the  man  has  been  counting  on.  He  will  come  to  them  after- 
ward. 

The  old  beavers  make  no  such  mistake.  They  have  tried  the 
hollow-log  trick  with  an  enemy  pursuing  them  to  the  blind  end,  and 
have  escaped  only  because  some  other  beaver  was  eaten. 

The  old  ones  know  that  water  alone  is  safety. 

That  is  the  first  and  last  law  of  beaver  life.  They,  too,  see  that 
phantom  destroyer  above  the  ice ;  but  a  dash  past  is  the  last  chance. 
How  many  of  the  beaver  escape  past  the  cut  in  the  dam  to  the  water 
below  depends  on  the  dexterity  of  the  trapper's  aim.  But  cer- 
tainly for  the  most,  one  blow  is  the  end ;  and  that  one  blow  is 
less  cruel  to  them  than  the  ravages  of  the  wolf  or  wolverine  in  spring, 
for  these  begin  to  eat  before  they  kill. 

A  signal,  and  the  dog  ceases  to  keep  guard  above  the  dam.  Where 
is  the  runway  in  which  the  others  are  hiding  f  The  dog  scampers 
round  aimlessly,  but  begins  to  sniff  and  run  in  a  line  and  scratch 
and  whimper.  The  man  sees  that  the  dog  is  on  the  trail  of  sag- 
ging snow,  and  the  sag  betrays  ice  settling  down  where  a  channel 
has  run  dry.  The  trapper  cuts  a  hole  across  the  river  end  of  the 
runway  and  drives  down  stakes.  The  young  beavers  are  now 
prisoners. 

The  human  mind  can't  help  wondering  why  the  foolish  youngsters 
didn't  crouch  below  the  ice  above  the  dam  and  lie  there  in  safe 
hiding  till  the  monster  went  away.  This  may  be  done  by  the  hermit 
beavers  —  fellows  who  have  lost  their  mates  and  go  through  life 
inconsolable ;  or  sick  creatures,  infested  by  parasites  and  turned 
off  to  house  in  the  river  holes ;  or  fat,  selfish  ladies,  who  don't 
want  the  trouble  of  training  a  family.  Whatever  these  solitaries 
are  —  naturalists  and  hunters  differ  —  they  have  the  wit  to  keep 
alive ;  but  the  poor  little  beavers  rush  right  into  the  jaws  of  death. 
Why  do  they  ?  For  the  same  reason  probably,  if  they  could  answer, 
that  people  trample  each  other  to  death  when  there  is  an  alarm 
in  a  crowd. 


198  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

They  cower  in  the  terrible  pen,  knowing  nothing  at  all  about 
their  hides  being  valued  all  the  way  from  fifty  cents  to  $20,  accord- 
ing to  the  quality;  nothing  about  the  dignity  of  being  a  coin  of 
the  realm  in  the  Northern  wilderness,  where  one  beaver  skin  sets 
the  value  for  mink,  otter,  marten,  bear,  and  all  other  skins,  one 
pound  of  tobacco,  one  kettle,  five  pounds  of  shot,  a  pint  of  brandy, 
and  half  a  yard  of  cloth ;  nothing  about  the  rascally  Indians  long 
ago  bartering  forty  of  their  hides  for  a  scrap  of  iron  and  a  great 
company  sending  one  hundred  thousand  beaver  skins  in  a  single 
year  to  make  hats  and  cloaks  for  the  courtiers  of  Europe ;  nothing 
about  the  laws  of  man  forbidding  the  killing  of  beaver  till  their 
number  increase. 

All  the  little  beaver  remembers  is  that  it  opened  its  eyes  to  day- 
light in  the  time  of  soft,  green  grasses;  and  that  as  soon  as  it  got 
strong  enough  on  a  milk  diet  to  travel,  the  mother  led  the  whole 
family  of  kittens  —  usually  three  or  four  —  down  the  slanting 
doorway  of  their  dim  house  for  a  swim ;  and  that  she  taught  them 
how  to  nibble  the  dainty,  green  shrubs  along  the  bank;  and  then 
the  entire  colony  went  for  the  most  glorious,  pell-mell  splash  up- 
stream to  fresh  ponds.  No  more  sleeping  in  that  stifling  lodge; 
but  beds  in  soft  grass  like  a  goose-nest  all  night,  and  tumbling  in 
the  water  all  day,  diving  for  the  roots  of  the  lily-pads.  But  the 
old  mother  is  always  on  guard,  for  the  wolves  and  bears  are  ravenous 
in  spring.  Soon  the  cubs  can  cut  the  hardening  bark  of  alder  and 
willow  as  well  as  their  two-year-old  brothers ;  and  the  wonderful 
thing  is  —  if  a  tooth  breaks,  it  grows  into  perfect  shape. 

By  August  the  little  fellows  are  great  swimmers,  and  the  colony 
begins  the  descent  of  the  stream  for  their  winter  home.  If  un- 
molested, the  old  dam  is  chosen;  but  if  the  hated  man-smell  is 
there,  new  water-ways  are  sought.  Burrows  and  washes  and 
channels  and  retreats  are  cleaned  out.  Trees  are  cut  and  a  great 
supply  of  branches  laid  up  for  winter  store  near  the  lodge,  not  a 
chip  of  edible  bark  being  wasted.  Just  before  the  frost  they  begin 
building  or  repairing  the  dam.     Each  night's  frost  hardens  the 


THE  TAKING  OF  THE  BEAVER  199 

plastered  clay  till  the  conical  wattled  roof  —  never  more  than  two 
feet  thick  —  will  support  the  weight  of  a  moose. 

All  work  is  done  with  mouth  and  fore  paws,  and  not  the  tail. 
This  has  been  finally  determined  by  observing  the  Marquis  of  Bute's 
colony  of  beavers.  If  the  family  —  the  old  parents  and  three 
seasons'  offspring  —  be  too  large  for  the  house,  new  chambers  are 
added.  In  height  the  house  is  seldom  more  than  five  feet  from 
the  base,  and  the  width  varies.  In  building  a  new  dam  they  begin 
under  water,  scooping  out  clay,  mixing  this  with  stones  and  sticks 
for  the  walls,  and  hollowing  out  the  dome  as  it  rises,  like  a  coffer- 
dam, except  that  man  pumps  out  water  and  the  beaver  scoops 
out  mud.  The  domed  roof  is  given  layer  after  layer  of  clay  till 
it  is  cold-proof.  Whether  the  houses  have  one  door  or  two  is  dis- 
puted ;  but  the  door  is  always  at  the  end  of  a  sloping  incline  away 
from  the  land  side,  with  a  shelf  running  round  above,  which  serves 
as  the  living-room.  Differences  in  the  houses,  breaks  below  water, 
two  doors  instead  of  one,  platforms  like  an  oven  instead  of  a  shelf, 
are  probably  explained  by  the  continual  abrasion  of  the  current. 
By  the  time  the  ice  forms,  the  beavers  have  retired  to  their  houses 
for  the  winter,  only  coming  out  to  feed  on  their  winter  stores  and 
get  an  airing. 

But  this  terrible  thing  has  happened ;  and  the  young  beavers 
huddle  together  under  the  ice  of  the  canal,  bleating  with  the  cry 
of  a  child.  They  are  afraid  to  run  back ;  for  the  crunch  of  feet 
can  be  heard.  They  are  afraid  to  go  forward ;  for  the  dog  is  whin- 
ing with  a  glee  that  is  fiendish  to  the  little  beavers.  Then  a  gust 
of  cold  air  comes  from  the  rear  and  a  pole  prods  forward. 

The  man  has  opened  a  hole  to  feel  where  the  hiding  beavers  are, 
and  with  little  terrified  yelps  they  scuttle  to  the  very  end  of  the 
runway.  By  this  time  the  dog  Is  emitting  howls  of  triumph. 
For  hours  he  has  been  boxing  up  his  wolfish  ferocity,  and  now  he 
gives  vent  by  scratching  with  a  zeal  that  would  burrow  to  the 
middle  of  earth. 

The  trapper  drives  in  more  stakes  close  to  the  blind  end  of  the 


200  THE  FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

channel,  and  cuts  a  hole  above  the  prison  of  the  beavers.  He  puts 
down  his  arm.  One  by  one  they  are  dragged  out  by  the  tail ;  and 
that  finishes  the  little  beaver  —  sacrificed,  like  the  guinea-pigs  and 
rabbits  of  bacteriological  laboratories,  to  the  necessities  of  man. 
Only,  this  death  is  swifter  and  less  painful.  A  prolonged  death 
struggle  with  the  beaver  would  probably  rob  the  trapper  of  half 
his  fingers.  Very  often  the  little  beavers  with  poor  fur  are  let  go. 
If  the  dog  attempts  to  capture  the  frightened  runaways  by  catching 
at  the  conspicuous  appendage  to  the  rear,  that  dog  is  likely  to 
emerge  from  the  struggle  minus  a  tail,  while  the  beaver  runs  off 
with  two. 

Trappers  have  curious  experiences  with  beaver  kittens  which 
they  take  home  as  pets.  When  young  they  are  as  easily  domesti- 
cated as  a  cat,  and  become  a  nuisance  with  their  love  of  fondling. 
But  to  them,  as  to  the  hunter,  comes  what  the  Indians  call  "the- 
sickness-of-long-thinking,"  the  gypsy  yearning  for  the  wilds.  Then 
extraordinary  things  happen.  The  beavers  are  apt  to  avenge  their 
comrades'  death.  One  old  beaver  trapper  of  New  Brunswick 
related  that  by  June  the  beavers  became  so  restless,  he  feared  their 
escape  and  put  them  in  cages.  They  bit  their  way  out  with  absurd 
ease. 

He  then  tried  log  pens.  They  had  eaten  a  hole  through  in  a 
night.  Thinking  to  get  wire  caging,  he  took  them  into  his  lodge, 
and  they  seemed  contented  enough  while  he  was  about;  but  one 
morning  he  wakened  to  find  a  hole  eaten  through  the  door,  and 
the  entire  round  of  birch-bark,  which  he  had  staked  out  ready  for 
the  gunwales  and  ribbing  of  his  canoe  —  bark  for  which  he  had 
travelled  forty  miles  —  chewed  into  shreds.  The  beavers  had 
then  gone  upstream,  which  is  their  habit  in  spring. 


CHAPTER  II 
THE  MAKING  OF  THE  MOCCASINS 

It  is  a  grim  joke  of  the  animal  worid  that  the  lazy  moose  is  the 
moose  that  gives  wings  to  the  feet  of  the  pursuer.  When  snow 
comes  the  trapper  must  have  snow-shoes  and  moccasins.  For 
both,  moose  supplies  the  best  material. 

Bees  have  their  drones,  beaver  their  hermits,  and  moose  a  ladyfied 
epicure  who  draws  off  from  the  feeding-yards  of  the  common  herd, 
picks  out  the  sweetest  browse  of  the  forest,  and  gorges  herself  till 
fat  as  a  gouty  voluptuary.  While  getting  the  filling  for  his  snow- 
shoes,  the  trapper  also  stocks  his  larder ;  and  if  he  can  find  a  spinster 
moose,  he  will  have  something  better  than  shredded  venison  and 
more  delicately  flavored  than  finest  teal. 

Sledding  his  canoe  across  shallow  lakelets,  now  frozen  like  rock, 
still  paddling  where  there  is  open  way,  the  trapper  continues  to 
guide  his  course  up  the  water-ways.  Big  game,  he  knows,  comes 
out  to  drink  at  sunrise  and  sunset;  and  nearly  all  the  small  game 
frequents  the  banks  of  streams  either  to  fish  or  to  prey  on  the  fisher. 

Each  night  he  sleeps  in  the  open  with  his  dog  on  guard ;  or  else 
puts  up  the  cotton  tepee,  the  dog  curling  outside  the  tent  flap,  one 
ear  awake.  And  each  night  a  net  is  set  for  the  whitefish  that  are 
to  supply  breakfast,  feed  the  dog,  and  provide  heads  for  the  traps 
placed  among  rocks  in  midstream,  or  along  banks  where  dainty 
footprints  were  in  the  morning's  hoar-frost.  Brook  trout  can  still 
be  got  in  the  pools  below  waterfalls ;  but  the  trapper  seldom  takes 
time  now  to  use  the  line,  depending  on  his  gun  and  fish-net. 

During    the    Indian's     whitefish     month  —  the     white    man's 


202  THE  FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

November  —  the  weather  has  become  colder  and  colder ;  but  the 
trapper  never  indulges  in  the  big  log  fire  that  delights  the  heart 
of  the  amateur  hunter.  That  would  drive  game  a  week's  tracking 
from  his  course.  Unless  he  wants  to  frighten  away  nocturnal 
prowlers,  a  little  chip  fire,  such  as  the  fishermen  of  the  Banks  use 
in  their  dories,  is  all  the  trapper  allows  himself. 

First  snow  silences  the  rustling  leaves.  First  frost  quiets  the  flow 
of  waters.  Except  for  the  occasional  splitting  of  a  sap-frozen  tree, 
or  the  far  howl  of  a  wolf-pack,  there  is  the  stillness  of  death.  And 
of  all  quiet  things  in  the  quiet  forest,  the  trapper  is  the  quietest. 

As  winter  closes  in  the  ice-skim  of  the  large  lakes  cuts  the  bark 
canoe  like  a  knife.  The  canoe  is  abandoned  for  snow-shoes  and 
the  cotton  tepee  for  more  substantial  shelter. 

If  the  trapper  is  a  white  man  he  now  builds  a  lodge  near  the 
best  hunting-ground  he  has  found.  Around  this  he  sets  a  wide 
circle  of  traps  at  such  distances  their  circuit  requires  an  entire 
day,  and  leads  the  trapper  out  in  one  direction  and  back  in  another, 
without  retracing  the  way.  Sometimes  such  lodges  run  from  valley 
to  valley.  Each  cabin  is  stocked ;  and  the  hunter  sleeps  where 
night  overtakes  him.  But  this  plan  needs  two  men ;  for  if  the 
traps  are  not  closely  watched,  the  wolverine  will  rifle  away  a  price- 
less fox  as  readily  as  he  eats  a  shabby  muskrat.  The  stone  fire- 
place stands  at  one  end.  Moss,  clay,  and  snow  chink  up  the  logs. 
Parchment  across  a  hole  serves  as  window.  Poles  and  brush 
make  the  roof,  or  perhaps  the  remains  of  the  cotton  tent  stretched 
at  a  steep  angle  to  slide  off  the  accumulating  weight  of  snow. 

But  if  the  trapper  is  an  Indian,  or  the  white  man  has  a  messenger 
to  carry  the  pelts  marked  with  his  name  to  a  friendly  trading-post, 
he  may  not  build  a  lodge ;  but  move  from  hunt  to  hunt  as  the 
game  changes  feeding-ground.  In  this  case  he  uses  the  abuckwan  — 
canvas  —  for  a  shed  tent,  with  one  side  sloping  to  the  ground, 
banked  by  brush  and  snow,  the  other  facing  the  fire,  both  tent 
and  fire  on  such  a  slope  that  the  smoke  drifts  out  while  the  heat 
reflects  in.     Pine  and  balsam  boughs,  with  the  wood  end  pointing 


THE  MAKING  OF  THE  MOCCASINS         203 

out  like  sheaves  in  a  stook,  the  foliage  converging  to  a  soft  centre, 
form  the  trapper's  bed. 

The  snow  is  now  too  deep  to  travel  without  snow-shoes.  The 
frames  for  these  the  trapper  makes  of  ash,  birch,  or  best  of  all, 
the  mackikwatick  —  tamarack  —  curving  the  easily  bent  green 
wood  up  at  one  end,  canoe  shape,  and  smoothing  the  barked  wood 
at  the  bend,  like  a  sleigh  runner,  by  means  of  the  awkward  couteau 
croche,  as  the  French  hunter  calls  his  crooked  knife. 

In  style,  the  snow-shoe  varies  with  the  hunting-ground.  On 
forested,  rocky,  hummocky  land,  the  shoe  is  short  to  permit  short 
turns  without  entanglement.  Oval  and  broad,  rather  than  long 
and  slim,  it  makes  up  in  width  what  it  lacks  in  length  to  support 
the  hunter's  weight  above  the  snow.  And  the  toe  curve  is  slight; 
for  speed  is  impossible  on  bad  ground.  To  save  the  Instep  from 
jars,  the  slip  noose  may  be  padded  like  a  cowboy's  stirrup. 

On  the  prairie,  where  the  snowy  reaches  are  unbroken  as  air, 
snow-shoes  are  wings  to  the  hunter's  heels.  They  are  long,  and 
curved,  and  narrow,  and  smooth  enough  on  the  runners  for  the 
hunter  to  sit  on  their  rear  ends  and  coast  downhill  as  on  a  toboggan. 
If  a  snag  is  struck  midway,  the  racquets  may  bounce  safely  over 
and  glissade  to  the  bottom ;  or  the  toe  may  catch,  heels  fly  over 
head,  and  the  hunter  land  with  his  feet  noosed  in  frames  sticking 
upright  higher  than  his  neck. 

Any  trapper  can  read  the  story  of  a  hunt  from  snow-shoes. 
Round  and  short :  east  of  the  Great  Lakes.  Slim  and  long : 
from  the  prairie.  Padding  for  the  instep :  either  rock  ground 
or  long  runs.  Filling  of  hide  strips  with  broad  enough  interspaces 
for  a  small  foot  to  slip  through :  from  the  wet,  heavily  packed, 
snow  region  of  the  Atlantic  Coast,  for  trapping  only,  never  the 
chase,  small  game,  not  large.  Lace  ties.  Instead  of  a  noose  to  hold 
the  foot :  the  amateur  hunter.  Atihisc,  a  fine  filling  taken  from 
deer  or  caribou  for  the  heel  and  toe;  with  askimoneiab,  heavy, 
closely  interlaced,  membranous  filling  from  the  moose  across  the 
centre  to  bear  the  brunt  of  wear;    long  enough  for  speed,  short 


204  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

enough  to  turn  short :  the  trapper  knows  he  is  looking  at  the 
snow-shoe  of  the  craftsman.  This  is  the  sort  he  must  have  for 
himself. 

The  first  thing,  then  —  a  moose  for  the  heavy  filHng ;  pref- 
erably a  spinster  moose ;  for  she  is  too  lazy  to  run  from  a  hunter 
who  is  not  yet  a  Mercury ;  and  she  will  furnish  him  with  a  banquet 
fit  for  kings. 

Neither  moose  call  nor  birch  horn,  of  which  wonders  are  told, 
will  avail  now.  The  mating  season  is  well  past.  Even  if  an  old 
moose  responded  to  the  call,  the  chances  are  his  flesh  would  be 
unfit  for  food.  It  would  be  a  wasted  kill,  contrary  to  the  principles 
of  the  true  trapper. 

Every  animal  has  a  sign  language  as  plain  as  print.  The 
trapper  has  hardly  entered  the  forest  before  he  begins  to  read  this 
language.  Broad  hoof-marks  are  on  the  muskeg  —  quaking  bog, 
covered  with  moss  —  over  which  the  moose  can  skim  as  if  on 
snow-shoes,  where  a  horse  would  sink  to  the  saddle.  Park-like 
glades  at  the  heads  of  streams,  where  the  moose  have  spent  the 
summer  browsing  on  twigs  and  wallowing  in  water  holes  to  get 
rid  of  sand  flies,  show  trampled  brush  and  stripped  twigs  and 
rubbed  bark. 

Coming  suddenly  on  a  grove  of  quaking  aspens,  a  saucy  jay 
has  fluttered  up  with  a  noisy  call  —  an  alarm  note ;  and  something 
is  bounding  off  to  hiding  in  a  thicket  on  the  far  side  of  the  grove. 
The  wis-kat-jan,  or  whiskey  jack,  as  the  white  men  call  it,  who 
always  hangs  about  the  moose  herds,  has  seen  the  trapper  and 
sounded  the  alarm. 

In  August,  when  the  great,  palmated  horns,  which  budded 
out  on  the  male  in  July,  are  yet  in  the  velvet,  the  trapper  finds 
scraps  of  furry  hair  sticking  to  young  saplings.  The  vain  moose 
has  been  polishing  his  antlers,  preparatory  to  mating.  Later, 
there  is  a  great  whacking  of  horns  among  the  branches.  The 
moose,  spoiling  for  a  fight,  in  moose  language  is  challenging  his 


THE  MAKING  OF  THE  MOCCASINS         205 

rivals  to  battle.  Wood-choppers  have  been  interrupted  by  the 
apparition  of  a  huge,  palmated  head  through  a  thicket.  Mis- 
taking the  axe  for  his  rival's  defiance,  the  moose  arrives  on  the 
scene  in  a  mood  of  blind  rage  that  sends  the  chopper  up  a  tree, 
or  back  to  the  shanty  for  his  rifle. 

But  the  trapper  allows  these  opportunities  to  pass.  He  is 
not  ready  for  his  moose  until  winter  compels  the  abandoning  of 
the  canoe.  Then  the  moose  herds  are  yarding  up  in  some  sheltered 
feeding-ground. 

It  is  not  hard  for  the  trapper  to  find  a  moose  yard.  There  is 
the  tell-tale  cleft  footprint  in  the  snow.  There  are  the  cast-off 
antlers  after  the  battles  have  been  fought  —  the  female  moose 
being  without  horns  and  entirely  dependent  on  speed  and  hearing 
and  smell  for  protection.  There  is  the  stripped,  overhead  twig, 
where  a  moose  has  reared  on  hind  legs  and  nibbled  a  branch  above. 
There  is  the  bent  or  broken  sapling  which  a  moose  pulled  down 
with  his  mouth  and  then  held  down  with  his  feet  while  he  browsed. 
This  and  more  sign  language  of  the  woods  —  too  fine  for  the 
language  of  man  —  lead  the  trapper  close  on  the  haunts  of  a  moose 
herd.  But  he  does  not  want  an  ordinary  moose.  He  is  keen 
for  the  solitary  track  of  a  haughty  spinster.  And  he  probably 
comes  on  the  print  when  he  has  almost  made  up  his  mind  to  chance 
a  shot  at  one  of  the  herd  below  the  hill,  where  he  hides.  He  knows 
the  trail  is  that  of  a  spinster.  It  is  unusually  heavy ;  and  she  is 
always  fat.  It  drags  clumsily  over  the  snow;  for  she  is  lazy. 
And  it  doesn't  travel  straight  away  in  a  line  like  that  of  the  roving 
moose ;   for  she  loiters  to  feed  and  dawdle  out  of  pure  indolence. 

And  now  the  trapper  knows  how  a  hound  on  a  hot  scent  feels. 
He  may  win  his  prize  with  the  ease  of  putting  out  his  hand  and 
taking  it  —  sighting  his  rifle  and  touching  the  trigger.  Or,  by  the 
blunder  of  a  hair's  breadth,  he  may  daily  track  twenty  weary 
miles  for  a  week  and  come  back  empty  at  his  cartridge-belt,  empty 
below  his  cartridge-belt,  empty  of  hand,  and  full,  full  of  rage  at 
himself,  though  his  words  curse  the  moose.     He  may  win  his  prize 


2o6  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

in  one  of  two  ways :  (i)  by  running  the  game  to  earth  from  sheer 
exhaustion  ;    (2)  or  by  a  still  hunt. 

The  straightaway  hunt  is  more  dangerous  to  the  man  than  the 
moose.  Even  a  fat  spinster  can  outdistance  a  man  with  no  snow- 
shoes.  And  if  his  perseverance  lasts  longer  than  her  strength 
—  for  though  a  moose  swings  out  in  a  long-stepping,  swift  trot, 
it  is  easily  tired  —  the  exhausted  moose  is  a  moose  at  bay ;  and  a 
moose  at  bay  rears  on  her  hind  legs  and  does  defter  things  with  the 
flattening  blow  of  her  fore  feet  than  an  exhausted  man  can  do  with 
a  gun.  The  blow  of  a  cleft  hoof  means  something  sharply  split, 
wherever  that  spreading  hoof  lands.  And  if  the  something  wriggles 
on  the  snow  in  death-throes,  the  moose  pounds  upon  it  with  all 
four  feet  till  the  thing  is  still.  Then  she  goes  on  her  way  with  eyes 
ablaze  and  every  shaggy  hair  bristling. 

The  contest  was  even  and  the  moose  won. 

Apart  from  the  hazard,  there  is  a  barbarism  about  this  straight- 
away chase,  which  repels  the  trapper.  It  usually  succeeds  by 
bogging  the  moose  in  crusted  snow,  or  a  water  hole  —  and  then, 
Indian  fashion,  a  slaughter;  and  no  trapper  kills  for  the  sake  of 
killing,  for  the  simple  practical  reason  that  his  own  life  depends  on 
the  preservation  of  game. 

A  slight  snowfall  and  the  wind  in  his  face  are  ideal  conditions 
for  a  still  hunt.  One  conceals  him.  The  other  carries  the  man- 
smell  from  the  game. 

Which  way  does  the  newly  discovered  footprint  run  ?  More 
flakes  are  in  one  hole  than  the  other.  He  follows  the  trail  till  he 
has  an  idea  of  the  direction  the  moose  is  taking ;  for  the  moose 
runs  straightaway,  not  circling  and  doubling  back  on  cold  tracks 
like  the  deer,  but  marching  direct  to  the  objective  point,  where  it 
turns,  circles  slightly  —  a  loop  at  the  end  of  a  line  —  and  lies  down 
a  little  off  the  trail.  When  the  pursuer,  following  the  cold  scent, 
runs  past,  the  moose  gets  wind  and  is  off  in  the  opposite  direction 
like  a  vanishing  streak. 

Having  ascertained  the  lie  of  the  land,  the  trapper  leaves  the 


THE  MAKING  OF  THE  MOCCASINS         207 

line  of  direct  trail  and  follows  in  a  circling  detour.  Here,  he  finds 
the  print  fresher,  not  an  hour  old.  The  moose  had  stopped  to 
browse  and  the  markings  are  moist  on  a  twig.  The  trapper  leaves 
the  trail,  advancing  always  by  a  detour  to  leeward.  He  is  sure, 
now,  that  it  is  a  spinster.  If  it  had  been  any  other,  the  moose 
would  not  have  been  alone.  The  rest  would  be  tracking  into  the 
leader's  steps ;  and  by  the  fresh  trail  he  knows  for  a  certainty 
there  is  only  one.  But  his  very  nearness  increases  the  risk.  The 
wind  may  shift.  The  snowfall  is  thinning.  This  time,  when  he 
comes  back  to  the  trail,  it  is  fresher  still.  The  hunter  now  gets 
his  rifle  ready.  He  dare  not  put  his  foot  down  without  testing 
the  snow,  lest  a  twig  snap.  He  parts  a  way  through  the  brush 
with  his  hand  and  replaces  every  branch.  And  when  next  he 
comes  back  to  the  line  of  the  moose's  travel,  there  is  no  trail.  This 
is  what  he  expected.  He  takes  off  his  coat;  his  leggings,  if  they 
are  loose  enough  to  rub  with  a  leathery  swish ;  ,_hls  muskrat  fur 
cap,  if  it  has  any  conspicuous  color ;  his  boots,  if  they  are  noisy 
and  given  to  crunching.  If  only  he  aim  true,  he  will  have  moccasins 
soon  enough.  Leaving  all  impedimenta,  he  follows  back  on  his 
own  steps  to  the  place  where  he  last  saw  the  trail.  Perhaps  the 
saucy  jay  cries  with  a  shrill,  scolding  shriek  that  sends  cold  shivers 
down  the  trapper's  spine.  He  wishes  he  could  get  his  hands  on 
its  wretched  little  neck ;  and  turning  himself  to  a  statue,  he  stands 
stone-still  till  the  troublesome  bird  settles  down.     Then  he  goes  on. 

Here  is  the  moose  trail ! 

He  dare  not  follow  direct.  That  would  lead  past  her  hiding- 
place  and  she  would  bolt.  He  resorts  to  artifice ;  but,  for  that 
matter,  so  has  the  moose  resorted  to  artifice.  The  trapper,  too, 
circles  forward,  cutting  the  moose's  magic  guard  with  transverse 
zigzags.  But  he  no  longer  walks.  He  crouches,  or  creeps,  or  glides 
noiselessly  from  shelter  to  shelter,  very  much  the  way  a  cat  advances 
on  an  unwary  mouse.  He  sinks  to  his  knees  and  feels  forward  for 
snow-pads  every  pace.  Then  he  is  on  all-fours,  still  circling.  His 
detour  has  narrowed  and  narrowed  till  he  knows  she  must  be  in 


2o8  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

that  aspen  thicket.  The  brush  is  sparser.  She  has  chosen  her 
resting-ground  wisely.  The  man  falls  forward  on  his  face,  closing 
in,  closing  in,  wiggling  and  watching  till  —  he  makes  a  horrible 
discovery.  That  jay  is  perched  on  the  topmost  bough  of  the  grove ; 
and  the  man  has  caught  a  glimpse  of  something  buff-colored  be- 
hind the  aspens.  It  may  be  a  moose,  or  only  a  log.  The  untried 
hunter  would  fire.  Not  so  the  trapper.  Haphazard  aim  means 
fighting  a  wounded  moose,  or  letting  the  creature  drag  its  agony 
off  to  inaccessible  haunts.  The  man  worms  his  way  round  the 
thicket,  sighting  the  game  with  the  noiseless  circling  of  a  hawk 
before  the  drop.  An  ear  blinks.  But  at  that  instant  the  jay 
perks  his  head  to  one  side  with  a  curious  look  at  this  strange  object 
on  the  ground.  In  another  second  it  will  be  off  with  a  call  and  the 
moose  up. 

His  rifle  is  aimed  ! 

A  blinding  swish  of  aspen  leaves  and  snow  and  smoke !  The 
jay  is  off  with  a  noisy  whistle.  And  the  trapper  has  leather  for 
moccasins,  and  heavy  filling  for  his  snow-shoes,  and  meat  for  his 
larder. 

But  he  must  still  get  the  fine  filling  for  heel  and  toe ;  and  this 
comes  from  caribou  or  deer.  The  deer,  he  will  still  hunt  as  he  has 
still  hunted  the  moose,  with  this  difi'erence  :  that  the  deer  runs  in 
circles,  jumping  back  in  his  own  tracks,  leaving  the  hunter  to  follow 
a  cold  scent,  while  it,  by  a  sheer  bound  —  five  —  eight  —  twenty 
feet  off  at  a  new  angle,  makes  for  the  hiding  of  dense  woods.  No 
one  but  a  barbarian  would  attempt  to  run  down  a  caribou ;  for 
it  can  only  be  done  by  the  shameless  trick  of  snaring  in  crusted 
snow,  or  intercepting  while  swimming,  and  then  —  butchery. 

The  caribou  doesn't  run.  It  doesn't  bound.  It  floats  away 
into  space. 

One  moment  a  sandy-colored  form,  with  black  nose,  black 
feet,  and  a  glory  of  white  statuary  above  its  head,  is  seen  against 
the  far  reaches  of  snow.     The  next,  the  form  has  shrunk  —  and 


Very  Fine  Gray  Squirrel. 


THE  MAKING  OF  THE  MOCCASINS         209 

shrunk  —  and  shrunk,  antlers  laid  back  against  its  neck,  till  there 
is  a  vanishing  speck  on  the  horizon.  The  caribou  has  not  been 
standing  at  all.  It  has  skimmed  out  of  sight ;  and  if  there  is  any- 
clear  ice  across  the  marshes,  it  literally  glides  beyond  vision  from 
very  speed.  But,  provided  no  man-smell  crosses  its  course,  the 
caribou  is  vulnerable  in  its  habits.  Morning  and  evening,  it  comes 
back  to  the  same  watering-place ;  and  it  returns  to  the  same  bed 
for  the  night.  If  the  trapper  can  conceal  himself  without  crossing 
its  trail  he  easily  obtains  the  fine  filling  for  his  snow-shoes. 

Moccasins  must  now  be  made. 

The  trapper  shears  off  the  coarse  hair  with  a  sharp  knife.  The 
hide  is  soaked ;  and  a  blunter  blade  tears  away  the  remaining 
hairs  till  the  skin  is  white  and  clean.  The  flesh  side  is  similarly 
cleaned  and  the  skin  rubbed  with  all  the  soap  and  grease  it  will 
absorb.  A  process  of  beating  follows  till  the  hide  is  limber.  Care- 
lessness at  this  stage  makes  buckskin  soak  up  water  like  a  sponge 
and  dry  to  a  shapeless  board.  The  skin  must  be  stretched  and 
pulled  till  it  will  stretch  no  more.  Frost  helps  the  tanning,  drying 
all  moisture  out ;  and  the  skin  becomes  as  soft  a^  down,  without  a 
crease.  The  smoke  of  punk  from  a  rotten  tree  gives  the  dark 
yellow  color  to  the  hide  and  prevents  hardening.  The  skin  is 
now.  ready  for  the  needle ;  and  all  odd  bits  are  hoarded  away. 

Equipped  with  moccasins  and  snow-shoes,  the  trapper  is  now 
the  winged  messenger  of  the  tragic  fates  to  the  forest  world. 


CHAPTER  III 
THE  INDIAN  TRAPPER 

It  Is  dawn  when  the  Indian  trapper  leaves  his  lodge. 

In  midwinter  of  the  Far  North,  dawn  comes  late.  Stars, 
which  shine  with  a  hard,  clear,  crystal  radiance  only  seen  in  North- 
ern skies,  pale  in  the  gray  morning  gloom ;  and  the  sun  comes  over 
the  horizon  dim  through  mists  of  frost-smoke.  In  an  hour  the 
frost-rrilst,  lying  thick  to  the  touch  like  clouds  of  steam,  will  have 
cleared ;  and  there  will  be  nothing  from  sky-line  to  sky-line  but 
blinding  sunlight  and  snow-glare. 

The  Indian  trapper  must  be  far  afield  before  mid-day.  Then 
the  sun  casts  no  man-shadow  to  scare  game  from  his  snares.  Black 
is  the  flag  of  betrayal  in  Northern  midwinter.  It  Is  by  the  big 
liquid  eye,  glistening  on  the  snow  like  a  black  marble,  that  the 
trapper  detects  the  white  hare;  and  a  jet  tail-tip  streaking  over 
the  white  wastes  in  dots  and  dashes  tells  him  the  little  ermine, 
whose  coat  must  line  some  emperor's  coronation  robe,  is  alter- 
nately scudding  over  the  drifts  and  diving  below  the  snow  with  the 
forward  wriggling  of  a  snake  under  cover.  But  the  moving  man- 
shadow  Is  bigger  and  plainer  on  the  snow  than  the  hare's  eye  or 
the  ermine's  jet  tip ;  so  the  Indian  trapper  sets  out  In  the  gray 
darkness  of  morning  and  must  reach  his  hunting-grounds  before 
high  noon. 

With  long  snow-shoes,  that  carry  him  over  the  drifts  In  swift, 
coasting  strides,  he  swings  out  In  that  easy,  ambling,  Indian  trot, 
which  gives  never  a  jar  to  the  runner,  nor  rests  long  enough  for 
the  snows  to  crunch  beneath  his  tread. 

aio 


THE   INDIAN  TRAPPER  211 

The  rifle,  which  he  got  in  trade  from  the  fur  post,  is  over  his 
shoulder,  or  swinging  Hghtly  in  one  hand,  A  hunter's  knife  and 
short-handled  woodman's  axe  hang  through  the  beaded  scarf, 
belting  in  his  loose,  caribou  capote.  Powder-horn  and  heavy 
muskrat  gauntlets  are  attached  to  the  cord  about  his  neck ;  so  with- 
out losing  either  he  can  fight  bare-handed,  free  and  in  motion,  at 
a  moment's  notice.  And  somewhere,  in  side  pockets  or  hanging 
down  his  back,  is  his  skipertogan  —  a  skin  bag  with  amulet  against 
evil,  matches,  touchwood,  and  a  scrap  of  pemmican.  As  he  grows 
hot,  he  throws  back  his  hood,  running  bareheaded  and  loose  about 
the  chest. 

Each  breath  clouds  to  frost  against  his  face  till  hair  and  brows 
and  lashes  are  fringed  with  frozen  moisture.  The  white  man 
would  hugger  his  face  up  with  scarf  and  collar  the  more  for  this ; 
but  the  Indian  knows  better.  Suddenly  chilled  breath  would 
soak  scarf  and  collar  wet  to  his  skin ;  and  his  face  would  be  frozen 
before  he  could  go  five  paces.  But  with  dry  skin  and  quickened 
blood,  he  can  defy  the  keenest  cold;  so  he  loosens  his  coat  and 
runs  the  faster. 

As  the  light  grows,  dim  forms  shape  themselves  in  the  gray 
haze.  Pine  groves  emerge  from  the  dark,  wreathed  and  festooned 
in  snow.  Cones  and  domes  and  cornices  of  snow  heap  the  under- 
brush and  spreading  larch  boughs.  Evergreens  are  edged  with 
white.  Naked  trees  stand  like  limned  statuary  with  an  antlered 
crest  etched  against  the  white  glare.  The  snow  stretches  away 
in  a  sea  of  billowed,  white  drifts  that  seem  to  heave  and  fall  to  the 
motions  of  the  runner,  mounting  and  coasting  and  skimming  over 
the  unbroken  waste  like  a  bird  winging  the  ocean.  And  against 
this  endless  stretch  of  drifts  billowing  away  to  a  boundless  circle, 
of  which  the  man  is  the  centre,  his  form  is  dwarfed  out  of  all  pro- 
portion, till  he  looks  no  larger  than  a  bird  above  the  sea. 

When  the  sun  rises,  strange  color  effects  are  caused  by  the 
frost  haze.  Every  shrub  takes  fire ;  for  the  ice  drops  are  a  prism, 
and  the  result  is  the  same  as  if  there  had  been  a  star  shower  or 


212  THE  FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

rainfall  of  brilliants.  Does  the  Indian  trapper  see  all  this  ?  The 
white  man  with  white  man  arrogance  doubts  whether  his  tawny 
brother  of  the  wilds  sees  the  beauty  about  him,  because  the  Indian 
has  no  white  man's  terms  of  expression.  But  ask  the  bronzed 
trapper  the  time  of  day ;  and  he  tells  you  by  the  length  of  shadow 
the  sun  casts,  or  the  degree  of  light  on  the  snow.  Inquire  the 
season  of  the  year ;  and  he  knows  by  the  slant  sunlight  coming  up 
through  the  frost  smoke  of  the  southern  horizon.  And  get  him 
talking  about  his  Happy  Hunting-Grounds ;  and  after  he  has 
filled  it  with  the  implements  and  creatures  and  people  of  the  chase, 
he  will  describe  it  in  the  metaphor  of  what  he  has  seen  at  sunrise 
and  sunset  and  under  the  Northern  Lights.  He  does  not  see  these 
things  with  the  gabbling  exclamatories  of  a  tourist.  He  sees  them 
because  they  sink  into  his  nature  and  become  part  of  his  mental 
furniture.  The  most  brilliant  description  that  I  ever  heard  of  the 
Hereafter  was  from  an  old  Cree  squaw,  toothless,  wrinkled  like 
leather,  belted  at  the  waist  like  a  sack  of  wool,  with  hands  of  dried 
parchment,  and  moccasins  some  five  months  too  odoriferous.  Her 
version  ran  that  Heaven  would  be  full  of  the  music  of  running  waters 
and  south  winds ;  that  there  would  always  be  warm  gold  sunlight 
like  a  midsummer  afternoon,  with  purple  shadows,  where  tired 
women  could  rest ;  that  the  trees  would  be  covered  with  blossoms, 
and  all  the  pebbles  of  the  shore  like  dewdrops. 

Pushed  from  the  Atlantic  seaboard  back  over  the  mountains, 
from  the  mountains  to  the  Mississippi,  west  to  the  Rockies,  north 
to  the  Great  Lakes,  all  that  was  to  be  seen  of  nature  in  America 
the  Indian  trapper  has  seen ;   though  he  has  not  understood.. 

But  now  he  holds  only  a  fringe  of  hunting-grounds,  in  the 
timber  lands  of  the  Great  Lakes,  in  the  cafions  of  the  Rockies, 
and  across  that  Northern  land  which  converges  to  Hudson  Bay, 
reaching  west  to  Athabasca,  east  to  Labrador.  It  is  in  the  basin 
of  Hudson  Bay  regions  that  the  Indian  trapper  will  find  his  last 
hunting-grounds.  Here  climate  excludes  the  white  man,  and 
game    is   plentiful.     Here    Indian    trappers   were   snaring   before 


THE  INDIAN  TRAPPER  213 

Columbus  opened  the  doors  of  the  New  World  to  the  hordes  of 
the  Old ;  and  here  Indian  trappers  will  hunt  as  long  as  the  race 
lasts.  When  there  is  no  more  game,  the  Indian's  doom  is  sealed ; 
but  that  day  is  never  for  the  Hudson  Bay  region. 

The  Indian  trapper  has  set  few  large  traps.  It  Is  midwinter; 
and  by  December  there  is  a  curious  lull  in  the  hunting.  All  the 
streams  are  frozen  like  rock;  but  the  otter  and  pekan  and  mink 
and  marten  have  not  yet  begun  to  forage  at  random  across  open 
field.  Some  foolish  fish  always  dilly-dally  upstream  till  the  ice 
shuts  them  in.  Then  a  strange  thing  is  seen  —  a  kettle  of  living 
fish  ;  fish  gasping  and  panting  in  ice-hemmed  water  that  is  gradually 
lessening  as  each  day's  frost  freezes  another  layer  to  the  ice  walls 
of  their  prison.  The  banks  of  such  a  pond  hole  are  haunted  by 
the  otter  and  his  fisher  friends.  By-and-bye,  when  the  pond  is 
exhausted,  these  lazy  fishers  must  leave  their  safe  bank  and  forage 
across  country.     Meanwhile,  they  are  quiet. 

The  bear,  too,  is  still.  After  much  wandering  and  fastidious 
choosing  —  for  in  trapper  vernacular  the  bear  takes  a  long  time 
to  please  himself  —  bruin  found  an  upturned  stump.  Into  the 
hollow  below  he  clawed  grasses.  Then  he  curled  up  with  his  nose 
on  his  toes  and  went  to  sleep  under  a  snow  blanket  of  gathering 
depth.  Deer,  moose,  and  caribou,  too,  have  gone  off  to  their 
feeding-grounds.  Unless  they  are  scattered  by  a  wolf-pack  or  a 
hunter's  gun,  they  will  not  be  likely  to  move  till  this  ground  is 
eaten  over.  Nor  are  many  beaver  seen  now.  They  have  long 
since  snuggled  into  their  warm  houses,  where  they  will  stay  till 
their  winter  store  is  all  used ;  and  their  houses  are  now  hidden 
under  great  depths  of  deepening  snow.  But  the  fox  and  the  hare 
and  the  ermine  are  at  run ;  and  as  long  as  they  are  astir,  so  are 
their  rampant  enemies,  the  lynx  and  the  wolverine  and  the  wolf- 
pack,  all  ravenous  from  the  scarcity  of  other  game  and  greedy  as 
spring  crows. 

That  thought  gives  wings  to  the  Indian  trapper's  heels.     The 


214  THE  FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

pelt  of  a  coyote  —  or  prairie  wolf  —  would  scarcely  be  worth  the 
taking.  Even  the  big,  gray  timber-wolf  would  hardly  be  worth 
the  cost  of  the  shot,  except  for  service  as  a  tepee  mat.  The  white 
Arctic  wolf  would  bring  better  price.  The  enormous  black  or 
brown  arctic  wolf  would  be  more  valuable ;  but  the  value  would 
not  repay  the  risk  of  the  hunt.  But  all  these  worthless,  ravening 
rascals  are  watching  the  traps  as  keenly  as  the  trapper  does ;  and 
would  eat  up  a  silver  fox,  that  would  be  the  fortune  of  any  hunter. 

The  Indian  comes  to  the  brush  where  he  has  set  his  rabbit 
snares  across  a  runway.  His  dog  sniffs  the  ground,  whining. 
The  crust  of  the  snow  is  broken  by  a  heavy  tread.  The  twigs  are 
all  trampled  and  rabbit  fur  is  fluffed  about.  The  game  has  been 
rifled  away.  The  Indian  notices  several  things.  The  rabbit 
has  been  devoured  on  the  spot.  That  is  unlike  the  wolverine. 
He  would  have  carried  snare,  rabbit  and  all  off  for  a  guzzle  in  his 
own  lair.  The  footprints  have  the  appearance  of  having  been 
brushed  over;  so  the  thief  had  a  bushy  tail.  It  is  not  the  lynx. 
There  is  no  trail  away  from  the  snare.  The  marauder  has  come 
with  a  long  leap  and  gone  with  a  long  leap.  The  Indian  and  his 
dog  make  a  circuit  of  the  snare  till  they  come  on  the  trail  of  the 
intruder;  and  its  size  tells  the  Indian  whether  his  enemy  be  fox 
or  wolf. 

He  sets  no  more  snares  across  that  runway,  for  the  rabbits  have 
had  their  alarm.  Going  through  the  brush  he  finds  a  fresh  runway 
and  sets  a  new  snare. 

Then  his  snow-shoes  are  winging  him  over  the  drifts  to  the 
next  trap.  It  is  a  deadfall.  Nothing  is  in  it.  The  bait  is  un- 
touched and  the  trap  left  undisturbed.  A  wolverine  would  have 
torn  the  thing  to  atoms  from  very  wickedness,  chewed  the  bait 
in  two,  and  spat  it  out  lest  there  should  be  poison.  The  fox  would 
have  gone  in  and  had  his  back  broken  by  the  front  log.  And  there 
is  the  same  brush  work  over  the  trampled  snow,  as  if  the  visitor 
had  tried  to  sweep  out  his  own  trail ;  and  the  same  long  leap  away, 
clearing  obstruction  of  log  and  drift,  to  throw  a  pursuer  off  the 


THE  INDIAN  TRAPPER  215 

scent.  This  time  the  Indian  makes  two  or  three  circuits;  but 
the  snow  is  so  crusted  it  is  impossible  to  tell  whether  the  scratchings 
lead  out  to  the  open  or  back  to  the  border  of  snow-drifted  woods. 
If  the  animal  had  followed  the  line  of  the  traps  by  running  just 
inside  the  brush,  the  Indian  would  know.  But  the  midwinter  day 
is  short,  and  he  has  no  time  to  explore  the  border  of  the  thicket. 

Perhaps  he  has  a  circle  of  thirty  traps.  Of  that  number  he 
hardly  expects  game  in  more  than  a  dozen.  If  six  have  a  prize, 
he  has  done  well.  Each  time  he  stops  to  examine  a  trap  he  must 
pause  to  cover  all  trace  of  the  man-smell,  daubing  his  own  tracks 
with  castoreum,  or  pomatum,  or  bears'  grease ;  sweeping  the  snow 
over  every  spot  touched  by  his  hand ;  dragging  the  flesh  side  of 
a  fresh  pelt  across  his  own  trail. 

Mid-day  comes,  the  time  of  the  short  shadow ;  and  the  Indian 
trapper  has  found  not  a  thing  in  his  traps.  He  only  knows  that 
some  daring  enemy  has  dogged  the  circle  of  his  snares.  That 
means  he  must  kill  the  marauder,  or  find  new  hunting-grounds. 
If  he  had  doubt  about  swift  vengeance  for  the  loss  of  a  rabbit,  he 
has  none  when  he  comes  to  the  next  trap.  He  sees  what  is  too 
much  for  words :  what  entails  as  great  loss  to  the  poor  Indian 
trapper  as  an  exchange  crash  to  the  white  man.  One  of  his  best 
steel  traps  lies  a  little  distance  from  the  pole  to  which  it  was  attached. 
It  has  been  jerked  up  with  a  great  wrench  and  pulled  as  far  as  the 
chain  would  go.  The  snow  is  trampled  and  stained  and  covered 
with  gray  fur  as  soft  and  silvery  as  chinchilla.  In  the  trap  is  a 
little  paw,  fresh  cut,  scarcely  frozen.  He  had  caught  a  silver  fox, 
the  fortune  of  which  hunters  dream,  as  prospectors  of  gold,  and 
speculators  of  stocks,  and  actors  of  fame.  But  the  wolves,  the 
great,  black  wolves  of  the  Far  North,  with  eyes  full  of  a  treacherous 
green  fire  and  teeth  like  tusks,  had  torn  the  fur  to  scraps  and  de- 
voured the  fox  not  an  hour  before  the  trapper  came. 

He  knows  now  what  his  enemy  is ;  for  he  has  come  so  suddenly 
on  their  trail  he  can  count  four  different  footprints,  and  claw-marks 
of  different  length.     They  have  fought  about  the  little  fox;    and 


2i6  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

some  of  the  smaller  wolves  have  lost  fur  over  it.  Then,  by  the 
blood-marks,  he  can  tell  they  have  got  under  cover  of  the  shrub 
growth  to  the  right. 

The  Indian  says  none  of  the  words  which  the  white  man  might 
say ;  but  that  is  nothing  to  his  credit ;  for  just  now  no  words  are 
adequate.  But  he  takes  prompt  resolution.  After  the  fashion 
of  the  old  Mosaic  law,  which  somehow  is  written  on  the  very  face 
of  the  wilderness  as  one  of  its  necessities,  he  decides  that  only 
life  for  life  will  compensate  such  loss.  The  danger  of  hunting  the 
big,  brown  wolf  —  he  knows  too  well  to  attempt  it  without  help. 
He  will  bait  his  small  traps  with  poison ;  take  out  his  big,  steel 
wolf  traps  to-morrow ;  then  with  a  band  of  young  braves  follow 
the  wolf-pack's  trail  during  this  lull  in  the  hunting  season. 

But  the  animal  world  knows  that  old  trick  of  drawing  a  herring 
scent  across  the  trail  of  wise  intentions ;  and  of  all  the  animal 
world,  none  knows  it  better  than  the  brown  Northern  wolf.  He 
carries  himself  with  less  of  a  hang-dog  air  than  his  brother  wolves, 
with  the  same  pricking  forward  of  sharp,  erect  ears,  the  same 
crouching  trot,  the  same  sneaking,  watchful  green  eyes ;  but  his 
tail,  which  is  bushy  enough  to  brush  out  every  trace  of  his  tracks, 
has  not  the  skulking  droop  of  the  gray  wolf's ;  and  in  size  he  is  a 
giant  among  wolves. 

The  trapper  shoulders  his  musket  again,  and  keeping  to  the 
open,  where  he  can  travel  fast  on  the  long  snow-shoes,  sets  out 
for  the  next  trap.  The  man-shadow  grows  longer.  It  is  late  in 
the  afternoon.  Then  all  the  shadows  merge  into  the  purple  gloom 
of  early  evening ;  but  the  Indian  travels  on  ;  for  the  circuit  of  traps 
leads  back  to  his  lodge. 

The  wolf  thief  may  not  be  far  off;  so  the  man  takes  his  musket 
from  the  case.  He  may  chance  a  shot  at  the  enemy.  Where 
there  are  woods,  wolves  run  under  cover,  keeping  behind  a  fringe 
of  brush  to  windward.  The  wind  carries  scent  of  danger  from  the 
open,  and   the  brush  forms   an  ambuscade.     Man  tracks,   where 


THE   INDIAN  TRAPPER  217 

man's  dog  might  scent  the  trail  of  a  wolf,  the  wolf  clears  at  a  long 
bound.  He  leaps  over  open  spaces,  if  he  can;  and  if  he  can't, 
crouches  low  till  he  has  passed  the  exposure. 

The  trapper  swings  forward  in  long,  straight  strides,  wasting 
not  an  inch  of  ground,  deviating  neither  to  right  nor  left  by  as 
much  space  as  a  white  man  takes  to  turn  on  his  heels.  Suddenly 
the  trapper's  dog  utters  a  low  whine  and  stops  with  ears  pricked 
forward  towards  the  brush.  At  the  same  moment  the  Indian, 
who  has  been  keeping  his  eyes  on  the  woods,  sees  a  form  rise  out 
of  the  earth  among  the  shadows.  He  is  not  surprised ;  for  he 
knows  the  way  the  wolf  travels,  and  the  fox  trap  could  not  have 
been  robbed  more  than  an  hour  ago.  The  man  thinks  he  has  come 
on  the  thieves  going  to  the  next  trap.  That  is  what  the  wolf  means 
him  to  think.  And  the  man,  too,  dissembles ;  for  as  he  looks  the 
form  fades  into  the  gloom,  and  he  decides  to  run  on  parallel  to  the 
brushwood,  with  his  gun  ready.  Just  ahead  is  a  break  in  the  shrub- 
bery. At  the  clearing  he  can  see  how  many  wolves  there  are,  and 
as  he  is  heading  home  there  is  little  danger. 

But  at  the  clearing  nothing  crosses.  The  dog  dashes  off  to 
the  woods  with  wild  barking,  and  the  trapper  scans  the  long,  white 
stretch  leading  back  between  the  bushes  to  a  horizon  that  is  already 
dim  in  the  steel  grays  of  twilight. 

Half  a  mile  down  this  open  way,  off  the  homeward  route  of  his 
traps,  a  wolfish  figure  looms  black  against  the  snow  —  and  stands  ! 
The  dog  prances  round  and  round  as  if  he  would  hold  the  creature 
for  his  master's  shot;  and  the  Indian  calculates  —  "After  all, 
there  is  only  one." 

What  a  chance  to  approach  it  under  cover,  as  it  has  approached 
his  traps !  The  stars  are  already  pricking  the  blue  darkness  in 
cold,  steel  points ;  and  the  Northern  Lights  are  swinging  through 
the  gloom  like  mystic  censers  to  an  invisible  Spirit,  the  Spirit  of 
the  still,  white,  wide.  Northern  wastes.     It  is  as  clear  as  day. 

One  thought  of  his  loss  at  the  fox  trap  sends  the  Indian  flitting 
through    the    underwoods    like    a    hunted    partridge.     The    sharp 


21 8  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

barkings  of  the  dog  increase  in  fury,  and  when  the  trapper  emerges 
in  the  open,  he  finds  the  wolf  has  straggled  a  hundred  yards  farther. 
That  was  the  meaning  of  the  dog's  alarm.  Going  back  to  cover, 
the  hunter  again  advances.  But  the  wolf  keeps  moving  leisurely, 
and  each  time  the  man  sights  his  game  it  is  still  out  of  range.  The 
man  runs  faster  now,  determined  to  get  abreast  of  the  wolf  and 
utterly  heedless  of  the  increasing  danger,  as  each  step  puts  greater 
distance  between  him  and  his  lodge.  He  will  pass  the  wolf,  come 
out  in  front  and  shoot. 

But  when  he  comes  to  the  edge  of  the  woods  to  get  his  aim, 
there  is  no  wolf,  and  the  dog  is  barking  furiously  at  his  own  moonlit 
shadow.  The  wolf,  after  the  fashion  of  his  kind,  has  apparently 
disappeared  into  the  ground,  just  as  he  always  seems  to  rise  from 
the  earth.  The  trapper  thinks  of  the  "loup-garou,"  but  no  wolf- 
demon  of  native  legend  devoured  the  very  real  substance  of  that 
fox. 

The  dog  stops  barking,  gives  a  whine  and  skulks  to  his  master's 
feet,  while  the  trapper  becomes  suddenly  aware  of  low-crouching 
forms  gliding  through  the  underbrush.  Eyes  look  out  of  the  dark 
in  the  flash  of  green  lights  from  a  prism.  The  figures  are  in  hiding, 
but  the  moon  is  shining  with  a  silvery  clearness  that  throws  moving 
wolf  shadows  on  the  snow  to  the  trapper's  very  feet. 

Then  the  man  knows  that  he  has  been  tricked. 

The  Indian  knows  the  wolf-pack  too  well  to  attempt  flight 
from  these  sleuths  of  the  forest.  He  knows,  too,  one  thing  that 
wolves  of  forest  and  prairie  hold  in  deadly  fear  —  fire.  Two  or 
three  shots  ring  into  the  darkness  followed  by  a  yelping  howl, 
which  tells  him  there  is  one  wolf  less,  and  the  others  will  hold  off 
at  a  safe  distance.  Contrary  to  the  woodman's  traditions  of 
chopping  only  on  a  windy  day,  the  Indian  whips  out  his  axe  and 
chops  with  all  his  might  till  he  has  wood  enough  for  a  roaring  fire. 
That  will  keep  the  rascals  away  till  the  pack  goes  off  in  full  cry, 
or  daylight  comes. 

Whittling  a  limber  branch  from  a  sapling,  the  Indian   hastily 


THE   INDIAN  TRAPPER  219 

makes  a  bow,  and  shoots  arrow  after  arrow  with  the  tip  in  flame 
to  high  mid-air,  hoping  to  signal  the  far-off  lodges.  But  the  night 
is  too  clear.  The  sky  is  silver  with  stars,  and  moonlight  and  re- 
flected snow-glare,  and  the  Northern  Lights  flicker  and  wane  and 
fade  and  flame  with  a  brilliancy  that  dims  the  tiny  blaze  of  the 
arrow  signal.  The  smoke  rising  from  his  fire  in  a  straight  column 
falls  at  the  height  of  the  trees,  for  the  frost  lies  on  the  land  heavy, 
palpable,  impenetrable.  And  for  all  the  frost  is  thick  to  the  touch, 
the  night  is  as  clear  as  burnished  steel.  That  is  the  peculiarity 
of  Northern  cold.  The  air  seems  to  become"absolutely  compressed 
with  the  cold ;  but  that  same  cold  freezes  out  and  precipitates 
every  particle  of  floating  moisture  till  earth  and  sky,  moon  and 
stars  shine  with  the  glistening  of  polished  metal. 

A  curious  crackling,  like  the  rustling  of  a  flag  in  a  gale,  comes 
through  the  tightening  silence.  The  intelligent  half-breed  says 
this  is  from  the  Northern  Lights.  The  white  man  says  it  is  electric 
activity  in  compressed  air.  The  Indian  says  it  is  a  spirit,  and  he 
may  mutter  the  words  of  the  braves  in  death  chant : 

"If  I  die,  I  die  valiant, 
I  go  to  death  fearless. 
I  die  a  brave  man. 
I  go  to  those  heroes  who  died  without  fear. " 

Hours  pass.  The  trapper  gives  over  shooting  fire  arrows  into 
the  air.  He  heaps  his  fire  and  watches, 'musket  in  hand.  The 
light  of  the  moon  is  white  like  statuary.  The  snow  is  pure  as 
statuary.  The  snow-edged  trees  are  chiselled  clear  like  statuary; 
and  the  silence  is  of  stone.  Only  the  snap  of  the  blaze,  the  crackling 
of  the  frosted  air,  the  break  of  a  twig  back  among  the  brush,  where 
something  has  moved,  and  the  little,  low,  smothered  barkings  of 
the  dog  on  guard. 

By-and-bye  the  rustling  through  the  brush  ceases ;  and  the 
dog  at  last  lowers  his  ears  and  lies  quiet.     The  trapper  throws  a 


220  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

stick  Into  the  woods  and  sends  the  dog  after  it.  The  dog  comes 
back  without  any  barkings  of  alarm.  The  man  knows  that  the 
wolves  have  drawn  off.  Will  he  wait  out  that  long  Northern  night  ? 
He  has  had  nothing  to  eat  but  the  piece  of  pemmican.  The  heavy 
frost  drowsiness  will  come  presently ;  and  if  he  falls  asleep  the  fire 
will  go  out.  An  hour's  run  will  carry  him  home ;  but  to  make 
speed  with  the  snow-shoes  he  must  run  in  the  open,  exposed  to  all 
watchers. 

When  an  Indian  balances  motives,  the  motive  of  hunger  In- 
variably prevails.  Pulling  up  his  hood,  belting  in  the  caribou 
coat  and  kicking  up  the  dog,  the  trapper  strikes  out  for  the  open 
way  leading  back  to  the  line  of  his  traps,  and  the  hollow  where 
the  lodges  have  been  built  for  shelter  against  wind.  There  is 
another  reason  for  building  lodges  in  a  hollow.  Sound  of  the 
hunter  will  not  carry  to  the  game;  but  neither  will  sound  of  the 
game  carry  to  the  hunter. 

And  if  the  game  should  turn  hunter  and  the  man  turn  hunted ! 
The  trapper  speeds  down  the  snowy  slope,  striding,  sliding,  coast- 
ing, vaulting  over  hummocks  of  snow,  glissading  down  the  drifts, 
leaping  rather  than  running.  The  frosty  air  acts  as  a  conductor  to 
sound,  and  the  frost  films  come  in  stings  against  the  face  of  the 
man  whose  eye,  ear,  and  touch  are  strained  for  danger.  It  is  the 
dog  that  catches  the  first  breath  of  peril,  uttering  a  smothered 
'^zvool  woo!^^  The  trapper  tries  to  persuade  himself  the  alarm 
was  only  the  far  scream  of  a  wolf-hunted  lynx ;  but  it  comes  again, 
deep  and  faint,  like  an  echo  in  a  dome.  One  glance  over  his  shoulder 
shows  him  black  forms  on  the  snow-crest  against  the  sky. 

He  has  been  tricked  again,  and  knows  how  the  fox  feels  before 
the  dogs  in  full  cry. 

The  trapper  is  no  longer  a  man.  He  is  a  hunted  thing  with 
terror  crazing  his  blood  and  the  sleuth-hounds  of  the  wilds  on  his 
trail.  Something  goes  wrong  with  his  snow-shoe.  Stooping  to 
right  the  slip-strings,  he  sees  that  the  dog's  feet  have  been  cut  by 
the  snow  crust  and  are  bleeding.     It  is  life  for  life  now;    the  old, 


THE   INDIAN  TRAPPER  221 

hard,  inexorable  Mosaic  law,  that  has  no  new  dispensation  in  the 
Northern  wilderness,  and  demands  that  a  beast's  life  shall  not 
sacrifice  a  man's. 

One  blow  of  his  gun  and  the  dog  is  dead. 

The  far,  faint  howl  has  deepened  to  a  loud,  exultant  bay.  The 
wolf-pack  are  in  full  cry.  The  man  has  rounded  the  open  alley 
between  the  trees  and  is  speeding  down  the  hillside  winged  with 
fear.  He  hears  the  pack  pause  where  the  dog  fell.  That  gives 
him  respite.  The  moon  is  behind,  and  the  man-shadow  flits  before 
on  the  snow  like  an  enemy  heading  him  back.  The  deep  bay  comes 
again,  hard,  metallic,  resonant,  nearer!  He  feels  the  snow-shoe 
slipping,  but  dare  not  pause.  A  great  drift  thrusts  across  his  way 
and  the  shadow  in  front  runs  slower.  They  are  gaining  on  him.  He 
hardly  knows  whether  the  crunch  of  snow  and  pantings  for  breath 
are  his  own  or  his  pursuers'.  At  the  crest  of  the  drift  he  braces 
himself  and  goes  to  the  bottom  with  the  swiftness  of  a  sled  on  a 
slide. 

The  slant  moonlight  throws  another  shadow  on  the  snow  at 
his  heels. 

It  is  the  leader  of  the  pack.  The  man  turns,  and  tosses  up  his 
arms  —  an  Indian  trick  to  stop  pursuit.  Then  he  fires.  The 
ravening  hunter  of  man  that  has  been  ambushing  him  half  the  day 
rolls  over  with  a  piercing  howl. 

The  man  is  off  and  away. 

If  he  only  had  the  repeater,  with  which  white  men  and  a  body- 
guard of  guides  hunt  down  a  single  quarry,  he  would  be  safe  enough 
now.  But  the  old  rifle  is  slow  loading,  and  speed  will  serve  him 
better  than  another  shot. 

Then  the  snow-shoe  noose  slips  completely  over  his  instep  to 
his  ankle,  throwing  the  racquet  on  edge  and  clogging  him  back. 
Before  he  can  right  it  they  are  upon  him.  There  is  nothing  for 
it  now  but  to  face  and  fight  to  the  last  breath.  His  hood  falls 
back,  and  he  wheels  with  the  moonlight  full  in  his  eyes  and  the 
Northern  Lights  waving  their  mystic  flames  high  overhead.     On 


222  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

one  side,  far  away,  are  the  tepee  peaks  of  the  lodges ;  on  the  other, 
the  solemn,  shadowy,  snow-wreathed  trees,  like  funeral  watchers 
—  watchers  of  how  many  brave  deaths  in  a  desolate,  lonely  land 
where  no  man  raises  a  cross  to  him  who  fought  well  and  died  with- 
out fear ! 

The  wolf-pack  attacks  in  two  ways.  In  front,  by  burying  the 
red-gummed  fangs  in  the  victim's  throat ;  in  the  rear,  by  snapping 
at  sinews  of  the  runner's  legs  —  called  hamstringing.  Who  taught 
them  this  devilish  ingenuity  of  attack .?  The  same  hard  master 
who  teaches  the  Indian  to  be  as  merciless  as  he  is  brave  —  hunger ! 

Catching  the  muzzle  of  his  gun,  he  beats  back  the  snapping 
red  mouths  with  the  butt  of  his  weapon ;  and  the  foremost  beasts 
roll  under. 

But  the  wolves  are  fighting  from  zest  of  the  chase  now,  as  much 
as  from  hunger.  Leaping  over  their  dead  fellows,  they  dodge 
the  coming  sweep  of  the  uplifted  arm,  and  crouch  to  spring.  A 
great  brute  is  reaching  for  the  forward  bound ;  but  a  mean,  small 
wolf  sneaks  to  the  rear  of  the  hunter's  fighting  shadow.  When  the 
man  swings  his  arm  and  draws  back  to  strike,  this  miserable  cur, 
that  could  not  have  worried  the  trapper's  dog,  makes  a  quick 
snap  at  the  bend  of  his  knees. 

Then  the  trapper's  feet  give  below  him.  The  wolf  has  bitten 
the  knee  sinews  to  the  bone.  The  pack  leap  up,  and  the  man 
goes  down. 

And  when  the  spring  thaw  came,  to  carry  away  the  heavy  snow 
that  fell  over  the  Northland  that  night,  the  Indians  travelling  to 
their  summer  hunting-grounds  found  the  skeleton  of  a  man. 
Around  it  were  the  bones  of  three  dead  wolves ;  and  farther  up 
the  hill  were  the  bleaching  remains  of  a  fourth.^ 

*  A  death  almost  similar  to  that  on  the  shores  of  Hudson  Bay  occurred  in  the  forests  of 
the  Boundary,  west  of  Lake  Superior,  a  few  years  ago.  In  this  case  eight  wolves  were  found 
round  the  body  of  the  dead  trapper,  and  eight  holes  were  empty  in  his  cartridge-belt  —  which 
tells  its  own  story. 


CHAPTER  IV 
BATISTE,  THE  BEAR  HUNTER 

The  city  man,  who  goes  bear-hunting  with  a  bodyguard  of 
armed  guides  in  a  field  where  the  hunted  have  been  on  the  run 
from  the  hunter  for  a  century,  gets  a  very  tame  idea  of  the  natural 
bear  in  its  natural  state.  Bears  that  have  had  the  fear  of  man 
inculcated  with  long-range  repeaters  lose  confidence  in  the  prowess 
of  an  aggressive  onset  against  invisible  foes.  The  city  man  comes 
back  from  the  wilds  with  a  legend  of  how  harmless  bears  have  be- 
come. In  fact,  he  doesn't  believe  a  wild  animal  ever  attacks  unless 
it  is  attacked.  He  doubts  whether  the  bear  would  go  on  its  life- 
long career  of  rapine  and  death,  if  hunger  did  not  compel  it,  or  if 
repeated  assault  and  battery  from  other  animals  did  not  teach 
the  poor  bear  the  art  of  self-defence. 

Grizzly  old  trappers  coming  down  to  the  frontier  towns  of  the 
Western  States  once  a  year  for  provisions,  or  hanging  round  the 
forts  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company  in  Canada  for  the  summer, 
tell  a  different  tale.  Their  hunting  is  done  in  a  field  where  human 
presence  is  still  so  rare  that  it  is  unknown  and  the  bear  treats  man- 
kind precisely  as  he  treats  all  other  living  beings  from  the  moose 
and  the  musk-ox  to  mice  and  ants  —  as  fair  game  for  his  own 
insatiable  maw. 

Old  hunters  may  be  great  spinners  of  yarns  —  "liars,"  the  city 
man  calls  them  —  but  Montagnais,  who  squats  on  his  heels  round 
the  fur  company  forts  on  Peace  River,  carries  ocular  evidence  in 
the  artificial  ridge  of  a  deformed  nose  that  the  bear  which  he  slew 
was  a  real  one  with  an  epicurean  relish  for  that  part  of  Indian 

223 


224  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

anatomy  which  the  Indian  considers  to  be  the  most  choice  bit  of  a 
moose.^  And  the  Kootenay  hunter  who  was  sent  through  the 
forests  of  Idaho  to  follow  up  the  track  of  a  lost  brave  brought 
back  proof  of  an  actual  bear ;  for  he  found  a  dead  man  lying  across 
a  pile  of  logs  with  his  skull  crushed  in  like  an  egg-shell  by  some- 
thing that  had  risen  swift  and  silent  from  a  lair  on  the  other  side 
of  the  logs  and  dealt  the  climbing  brave  one  quick  terrible  blow. 
And  little  blind  Ba'tiste,  wizened  and  old,  who  spent  the  last  twenty 
years  of  his  life  weaving  grass  mats  and  carving  curious  little  wooden 
animals  for  the  children  of  the  chief  factor,  could  convince  you  that 
the  bears  he  slew  in  his  young  days  were  very  real  bears,  altogether 
different  from  the  clumsy  bruins  that  gambol  with  boys  and  girls 
through  fairy  books. 

That  is,  he  could  convince  you  If  he  would ;  for  he  usually  sat 
weaving  and  weaving  at  the  grasses  —  weaving  bitter  thoughts 
into  the  woof  of  his  mat  —  without  a  word.  Round  his  white 
helmet,  such  as  British  soldiers  wear  in  hot  lands,  he  always  hung  a 
heavy  thick  linen  thing  like  the  frill  of  a  sunbonnet,  coming  over 
the  face  as  well  as  the  neck  —  "to  keep  de  sun  oif,"  he  would  mumble 
out  if  you  asked  him  why.  More  than  that  of  the  mysterious  frill 
worn  on  dark  days  as  well  as  sunny,  he  would  never  vouch  unless 
some  town-bred  man  patronizingly  pooh-poohed  the  dangers  of 
bear-hunting.  Then  the  grass  strands  would  tremble  with  excite- 
ment and  the  little  French  hunter's  body  would  quiver  and  he  would 
begin  pouring  forth  a  jumble,  half  habitant,  half  Indian,  with  a 
mixture  of  all  the  oaths  from  both  languages,  pointing  and  pointing 
at  his  hidden  face  and  bidding  you  look  what  the  bear  had  done 
to  him,  but  never  lifting  the  thick  frill. 

It  was  somewhere  between  the  tributary  waters  that  flow 
north  to  the  Saskatchewan  and  the  rivers  that  start  near  the  Sas- 

1  In  further  confirmation  of  Montagnais's  bear,  the  chief  factor's  daughter,  who  told 
me  the  story,  was  standing  in  the  fort  gate  when  the  Indian  came  running  back  with  a  grizzly 
pelt  over  his  shoulder.  When  he  saw  her  his  hands  went  up  to  conceal  the  price  he  had  paid 
for  the  pelt. 


Courtesy  Gottlieb  Company. 

Very  Fine  Bunch  of  Mink. 


BATISTE,  THE   BEAR  HUNTER  225 

katchewan  to  flow  south  to  the  Missouri.  Ba'tiste  and  the  three 
trappers  who  were  with  him  did  not  know  which  side  of  the  boundary 
they  were  on.  By  slow  travel,  stopping  one  day  to  trap  beaver, 
pausing  on  the  way  to  forage  for  meat,  building  their  canoes  where 
they  needed  them  and  abandoning  the  boats  when  they  made  a 
long  overland  portage,  they  were  three  weeks  north  of  the  American 
fur  post  on  the  banks  of  the  Missouri.  The  hunters  were  travelling 
light-handed.  That  is,  they  were  carrying  only  a  little  salt  and 
tea  and  tobacco.  For  the  rest,  they  were  depending  on  their 
muskets.     Game  had  not  been  plentiful. 

Between  the  prairie  and  "the  Mountains  of  the  Setting  Sun" 
—  as  the  Indians  call  the  Rockies  —  a  long  line  of  tortuous,  snaky 
red  crawled  sinuously  over  the  crests  of  the  foothills ;  and  all 
game  —  bird  and  beast  —  will  shun  a  prairie  fire.  There  was  no 
wind.  It  was  the  dead  hazy  calm  of  Indian  summer  in  the  late 
autumn  with  the  sun  swimming  in  the  purplish  smoke  like  a  blood- 
red  shield  all  day  and  the  serpent  line  of  flame  flickering  and  darting 
little  tongues  of  vermilion  against  the  deep  blue  horizon  all  night, 
days  filled  with  the  crisp  smell  of  withered  grasses,  nights  as  clear 
and  cold  as  the  echo  of  a  bell.  On  a  windless  plain  there  is  no 
danger  from  a  prairie  fire.  One  may  travel  for  weeks  without 
nearing  or  distancing  the  waving  tide  of  fire  against  a  far  sky ;  and 
the  four  trappers,  running  short  of  rations,  decided  to  try  to  flank 
the  fire  coming  around  far  enough  ahead  to  intercept  the  game 
that  must  be  moving  away  from  the  fire  line. 

Nearly  all  hunters,  through  some  dexterity  of  natural  endow- 
ment, unconsciously  become  specialists.  One  man  sees  beaver 
signs  where  another  sees  only  deer.  For  Ba'tiste,  the  page  of 
nature  spelled  B-E-A-R  !  Fifteen  bear  in  a  winter  is  a  wonderfully 
good  season's  work  for  any  trapper.  Ba'tiste's  record  for  one 
lucky  winter  was  fifty-four.  After  that  he  was  known  as  the  bear 
hunter.  Such  a  reputation  affects  keen  hunters  differently.  The 
Indian  grows  cautious  almost  to  cowardice.  Ba'tiste  grew  rash. 
He  would  follow  a  wounded  grizzly  to  cover.     He  would  afterward 


226  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

laugh  at  the  episode  as  a  joke  if  the  wounded  brute  had  treed  him. 
"For  sure,  good  t'ing  dat  was  not  de  prairie  dat  tarn,"  he  would 
say,  flinging  down  the  pelt  of  his  foe.  The  other  trappers  with 
Indian  blood  in  their  veins  might  laugh,  but  they  shook  their  heads 
when  his  back  was  turned. 

Flanking  the  fire  by  some  of  the  great  gullies  that  cut  the  foothills 
like  trenches,  the  hunters  began  to  find  the  signs  they  had  been 
seeking.  For  Ba'tiste,  the  many  different  signs  had  but  one  mean- 
ing. Where  some  summer  rain  pool  had  dried  almost  to  a  soft 
mud  hole,  the  other  trappers  saw  little  cleft  foot-marks  that  meant 
deer,  and  prints  like  a  baby's  fingers  that  spelled  out  the  visit  of 
some  member  of  the  weasel  family,  and  broad  clay-hoof  impressions 
that  had  spread  under  the  weight  as  some  giant  moose  had  gone 
shambling  over  the  quaking  mud  bottom.  But  Ba'tiste  looked 
only  at  a  long  shuffling  foot-mark  the  length  of  a  man's  fore-arm 
with  paddle  ball-like  pressures  as  of  monster  toes.  The  French 
hunter  would  at  once  examine  which  way  that  great  foot  had 
pointed.  Were  there  other  impressions  dimmer  on  the  dry  mud  f 
Did  the  crushed  spear-grass  tell  any  tales  of  what  had  passed 
that  mud  hole .''  If  it  did,  Ba'tiste  would  be  seen  wandering 
apparently  aimlessly  out  on  the  prairie,  carrying  his  uncased  rifle 
carefully  that  the  sunlight  should  not  glint  from  the  barrel,  zig- 
zagging up  a  foothill  where  perhaps  wild  plums  or  shrub  berries 
hung  rotting  with  frost  ripeness.  Ba'tiste  did  not  stand  full  height 
at  the  top  of  the  hill.  He  dropped  face  down,  took  off  his  hat 
or  scarlet  "safety"  handkerchief,  and  peered  warily  over  the  crest 
of  the  hill.  If  he  went  on  over  into  the  next  valley,  the  other  men 
would  say  they  "guessed  he  smelt  bear."  If  he  came  back,  they 
knew  he  had  been  on  a  cold  scent  that  had  faded  indistinguishably 
as  the  grasses  thinned. 

Southern  slopes  of  prairie  and  foothill  are  often  matted  tangles 
of  a  raspberry  patch.  Here  Ba'tiste  read  many  things  —  stories 
of  many  bears,  of  families,  of  cubs,  of  old  cross  fellows  wandering 
alone.     Great  slabs  of  stone  had  been  clawed  up  by  mighty  hands. 


BATISTE,  THE   BEAR  HUNTER  227 

Worms  and  snails  and  all  the  damp  clammy  things  that  cling  to 
the  cold  dark  between  stone  and  earth  had  been  gobbled  up  by  some 
greedy  forager.  In  the  trenched  ravines  crossed  by  the  trappers 
lay  many  a  hidden  forest  of  cottonwood  or  poplar  or  willow. 
Here  was  refuge,  indeed,  for  the  wandering  creatures  of  the  treeless 
prairie  that  rolled  away  from  the  tops  of  the  cliffs. 

Many  secrets  could  be  read  from  the  clustered  woods  of  the 
ravines.  The  other  hunters  might  look  for  the  fresh  nibbled  alder 
bush  where  a  busy  beaver  had  been  laying  up  store  for  winter, 
or  detect  the  blink  of  a  russet  ear  among  the  seared  foliage  betray- 
ing a  deer,  or  wonder  what  ilesh-eater  had  caught  the  poor  jack 
rabbit  just  outside  his  shelter  of  thorny  brush. 

The  hawk  soaring  and  dropping  —  lilting  and  falling  and  lift- 
ing again  —  might  mean  that  a  little  mink  was  "playing  dead" 
to  induce  the  bird  to  swoop  down  so  that  the  vampire  beast  could 
suck  the  hawk's  blood,  or  that  the  hawk  was  watching  for  an  un- 
guarded moment  to  plunge  down  with  his  talons  in  a  poor  "fool- 
hen's"  feathers. 

These  things  might  interest  the  others.  They  did  not  interest 
Ba'tiste.  Ba'tiste's  eyes  were  for  lairs  of  grass  crushed  so  recently 
that  the  spear  leaves  were  even  now  rising ;  for  holes  in  the  black 
mould  where  great  ripping  claws  had  been  tearing  up  roots  ;  for  hollow 
logs  and  rotted  stumps  where  a  black  bear  might  have  crawled  to 
take  his  afternoon  siesta ;  for  punky  trees  which  a  grizzly  might 
have  torn  open  to  gobble  ants'  eggs ;  for  scratchlngs  down  the  bole 
of  poplar  or  cottonwood  where  some  languid  bear  had  been  sharp- 
ening his  claws  in  midsummer  as  a  cat  will  scratch  chair-legs ;  for 
great  pits  deep  in  the  clay  banks,  where  some  silly  badger  or  gopher 
ran  down  to  the  depths  of  his  burrow  in  sheer  terror  only  to  have 
old  bruin  come  ripping  and  tearing  to  the  innermost  recesses,  with 
scattered  fur  left  that  told  what  had  happened. 

Some  soft  oozy  moss-padded  lair,  deep  in  the  marsh  with  the 
reeds  of  the  brittle  cat-tails  lifting  as  If  a  sleeper  had  just  risen, 
sets  Ba'tiste's  pulse  hopping  —  jumping  —  marking  time  In  thrills 


228  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

like  the  lithe  bounds  of  a  pouncing  mountain-cat.  With  tread 
soft  as  the  velvet  paw  of  a  panther,  he  steals  through  the  cane- 
brake  parting  the  reeds  before  each  pace,  brushing  aside  softly 

—  silently  what  might  crush  !  —  snap  !  —  sound  ever  so  slight 
an  alarm  to  the  little  pricked  ears  of  a  shabby  head  tossing  from 
side  to  side  —  jerk  —  jerk  —  from  right  to  left  —  from  left  to 
right  —  always  on  the  listen  !  —  on  the  listen  !  —  for  prey  !  —  for 
prey ! 

"Oh,  for  sure,  that  Ba'tiste,  he  was  but  a  fool-hunter,"  as  his 
comrades  afterward  said  (it  is  always  so  very  plain  afterward) ; 
"that  Ba'tiste,  he  was  a  fool!  What  man  else  go  step  —  step  — 
into  the  marsh  after  a  bear !" 

But  the  truth  was  that  Ba'tiste,  the  cunning  rascal,  always 
succeeded  in  coming  out  of  the  marsh,  out  of  the  bush,  out  of  the 
windfall,  sound  as  a  top,  safe  and  unscratched,  with  a  bear  skin 
over  his  shoulder,  the  head  swinging  pendant  to  show  what  sort 
of  fellow  he  had  mastered. 

"Dat  wan!  —  ah!  —  diable  !  —  he  has  long  sharp  nose  —  he 
was  thin  —  thin  as  a  barrel  all  gone  but  de  hoops  —  ah  !  —  voila  1 

—  he  was  wan  ugly  gar^on,  was  dat  bear !" 

Where  the  hunters  found  tufts  of  fur  on  the  sage  brush,  bits  of 
skin  on  the  spined  cactus,  the  others  might  vow  coyotes  had  worried 
a  badger.  Ba'tiste  would  have  it  that  the  badger  had  been  slain 
by  a  bear.  The  cached  carcass  of  fawn  or  doe,  of  course,  meant 
bear ;  for  the  bear  is  an  epicure  that  would  have  meat  gamy.  To 
that  the  others  would  agree. 

And  so  the  shortening  autumn  days  with  the  shimmering  heat 
of  a  crisp  noon  and  the  noiseless  chill  of  starry  twilights  found  the 
trappers  canoeing  leisurely  upstream  from  the  northern  tributaries 
of  the  Missouri  nearing  the  long  overland  trail  that  led  to  the  hunt- 
ing-fields In  Canada. 

One  evening  they  came  to  a  place  bounded  by  high  cliff  banks 
with  the  flats  heavily  wooded  by  poplar  and  willow.  Ba'tiste  had 
found  signs  that  were  hot  —  oh !  so  hot !     The  mould  of  an  up- 


BA'TISTE,  THE   BEAR  HUNTER  229 

rooted  gopher  hole  was  so  fresh  that  it  had  not  yet  dried.  This 
was  not  a  region  of  timber-wolves.  What  had  dug  that  hole  .?  Not 
the  small,  skulking  coyote  —  the  vagrant  of  prairie  life !  Oh ! 
—  no !  —  the  coyote  like  other  vagrants  earns  his  living  without 
work,  by  skulking  in  the  wake  of  the  business-like  badger;  and 
when  the  badger  goes  down  in  the  gopher  hole,  Master  Coyote 
stands  near  by  and  gobbles  up  all  the  stray  gophers  that  bolt  to 
escape  the  invading  badger.^  What  had  dug  the  hole  ?  Ba'tiste 
thinks  that  he  knows. 

That  was  on  open  prairie.  Just  below  the  cliff  is  another  kind 
of  hole  —  a  roundish  pit  dug  between  moss-covered  logs  and  earth 
wall,  a  pit  with  grass^clawed  down  into  it,  snug  and  hidden  and 
sheltered  as  a  bird's  nest.  If  the  pit  is  what  Ba'tiste  thinks,  some- 
where on  the  banks  of  the  stream  should  be  a  watering-place.  He 
proposes  that  they  beach  the  canoes  and  camp  here.  Twilight 
is  not  a  good  time  to  still  hunt  an  unseen  bear.  Twilight  is  the 
time  when  the  bear  himself  goes  still  hunting.  Ba'tiste  will  go 
out  in  the  early  morning.  Meantime  if  he  stumbles  on  what  looks 
like  a  trail  to  the  watering-place,  he  will  set  a  trap. 

Camp  is  not  for  the  regular  trapper  what  it  is  for  the  amateur 
hunter  —  a  time  of  rest  and  waiting  while  others  skin  the  game 
and  prepare  supper. 

One  hunter  whittles  the  willow  sticks  that  are  to  make  the  camp 
fire.  Another  gathers  moss  or  boughs  for  a  bed.  If  fish  can  be 
got,  some  one  has  out  a  line.  The  kettle  hisses  from  the  cross-bar 
between  notched  sticks  above  the  fire,  and  the  meat  sizzling  at  the 
end  of  a  forked  twig  sends  up  a  flavor  that  whets  every  appetite. 
Over  the  upturned  canoes  bent  a  couple  of  men  gumming  afresh 
all  the  splits  and  seams  against  to-morrow's  voyage.  Then  with  a 
flip-flop  that  tells  of  the  other  side  of  the  flap-jacks  being  browned, 
the  cook  yodels  in  crescendo  that  "  Sup  —  per !  —  's  —  read  —  ee  !" 

^  This  phase  of  prairie  life  must  not  be  set  down  to  writer's  license.  It  is  something  that 
every  rider  of  the  plains  can  see  any  time  he  has  patience  to  rein  up  and  sit  like  a  statue  within 
field-glass  distance  of  the  gopher  burrows  about  nightfall  when  the  badgers  are  running. 


230  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

Supper  over,  a  trap  or  two  may  be  set  in  likely  places.  The 
men  may  take  a  plunge;  for  in  spite  of  their  tawny  skins,  these 
earth-colored  fellows  have  closer  acquaintance  with  water  than 
their  appearance  would  indicate.  The  man-smell  is  as  acute  to 
the  beast's  nose  as  the  rank  fur-animal-smell  is  to  the  man's  nose; 
and  the  first  thing  that  an  Indian  who  has  had  a  long  run  of  ill- 
luck  does  is  to  get  a  native  "sweating-bath"  and  make  himself 
clean. 

On  the  ripple  of  the  flowing  river  are  the  red  bars  of  the  camp 
fire.  Among  the  willows,  perhaps,  the  bole  of  some  birch  stands 
out  white  and  spectral.  Though  there  is  no  wind,  the  poplars 
shiver  with  a  fall  of  wan,  faded  leaves  like  snow-flakes  on  the  grave 
of  summer.  Red  bills  and  whiskey-jacks  and  lonely  phcebe-birds 
come  fluttering  and  pecking  at  the  crumbs.  Out  from  the  gray 
thicket  bounds  a  cottontail  to  jerk  up  on  his  hind  legs  with  surprise 
at  the  camp  fire.  A  blink  of  his  long  ear,  and  he  has  bounded 
back  to  tell  the  news  to  his  hare  family.  Overhead,  with  shrill 
clangor,  single  file  and  in  long  wavering  V  lines,  wing  geese  mi- 
grating southward  for  the  season.  The  children's  hour,  has  a 
great  poet  called  a  certain  time  of  day  .'*  Then  this  is  the  hour  of 
the  wilderness  hunter,  the  hour  when  "the  Mountains  of  the  Setting 
Sun"  are  flooded  in  fiery  lights  from  zone  to  zenith  with  the  snowy 
heights  overtopping  the  far  rolling  prairie  like  clouds  of  opal  at 
poise  in  mid-heaven,  the  hour  when  the  camp  fire  lies  on  the  russet 
autumn-tinged  earth  like  a  red  jewel,  and  the  far  line  of  the  prairie 
fire  billows  against  the  darkening  east  in  a  tide  of  vermilion  flame. 

Unless  it  is  raining,  the  voyageurs  do  not  erect  their  tent;  for 
they  will  sleep  in  the  open,  feet  to  the  fire,  or  under  the  canoes, 
close  to  the  great  earth,  into  whose  very  fibre  their  beings  seem  to 
be  rooted.  And  now  is  the  time  when  the  hunters  spin  their  yarns 
and  exchange  notes  of  all  they  have  seen  in  the  long  silent  day. 
There  was  the  prairie  chicken  with  a  late  brood  of  half-grown 
clumsy  clucking  chicks  amply  able  to  take  care  of  themselves,  but 
still  clinging  to  the  old   mother's  care.     When  the  hunter  came 


BA'TISTE,  THE  BEAR  HUNTER  231 

suddenly  on  them,  over  the  old  hen  went,  flopping  broken-winged 
to  decoy  the  trapper  till  her  children  could  run  for  shelter  —  when 
—  lo !  —  of  a  sudden,  the  broken  wing  is  mended  and  away  she 
darts  on  both  wings  before  he  has  uncased  his  gun !  There  are  the 
stories  of  bear  hunters  like  Ba'tiste  sitting  on  the  other  side  of  the 
fire  there,  who  have  been  caught  in  their  own  bear  traps  and  held  till 
they  died  of  starvation  and  their  bones  bleached  in  the  rusted  steel. 

That  story  has  such  small  relish  for  Ba'tiste  that  he  hitches 
farther  away  from  the  others  and  lies  back  flat  on  the  ground  close 
to  the  willow  under-tangle  with  his  head  on  his  hand. 

"For  sure,"  says  Ba'tiste  contemptuously,  "nobody  doesn't 
need  no  tree  to  climb  here  !  Sacre !  —  cry  wolf !  —  wolf !  —  and 
for  sure  !  —  diable  !  —  de  beeg  loup-garou  will  eat  you  yet ! " 

Down  somewhere  from  those  stars  overhead  drops  a  call  silvery 
as  a  flute,  clear  as  a  piccolo  —  some  night  bird  lilting  like  a  mote  on 
the  far  oceans  of  air.  The  trappers  look  up  with  a  movement 
that  in  other  men  would  be  a  nervous  start ;  for  any  shrill  cry  pierces 
the  silence  of  the  prairie  in  almost  a  stab.  Then  the  men  go  on 
with  their  yarn  telling  of  how  the  Blackfeet  murdered  some  traders 
on  this  very  ground  so  long  ago,  till  the  gloom  gathering  over  willow 
thicket  and  encircling  cliffs  seems  peopled  with  those  marauding 
warriors.  One  man  rises,  saying  that  he  is  "goin'  to  turn  in"  and 
is  taking  a  step  through  the  dark  to  his  canoe  when  there  is  a  dull 
pouncing  thud.  For  an  instant  the  trappers  thought  that  their 
comrade  had  stumbled  over  his  boat.  But  a  heavy  groan  —  a 
low  guttural  cry  —  a  shout  of  "Help  —  help  —  help  Ba'tiste!" 
and  the  man  who  had  risen  plunged  into  the  crashing  cane-brake, 
calling  out  incoherently  for  them  to  "help  —  help  Ba'tiste  !" 

In  the  confusion  of  cries  and  darkness,  it  was  impossible  for 
the  other  two  trappers  to  know  what  had  happened.  Their  first 
thought  was  of  the  Indians  whose  crimes  they  had  been  telling. 
Their  second  was  for  their  rifles  —  and  they  had  both  sprung  over  the 
fire  where  they  saw  the  third  man  striking  —  striking  —  striking 
wildly  at  something  in  the  dark.     A  low  worrying  growl  —  and 


232  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

they  descried  the  Frenchman  rolling  over  and  over,  clutched  by 
or  clutching  a  huge  furry  form  —  hitting  —  plunging  with  his 
knife  —  struggling  —  screaming  with  agony. 

"It's  Ba'tiste !  It's  a  bear!"  shouted  the  third  man,  who  was 
attempting  to  drive  the  brute  off  by  raining  blows  on  its  head. 

Man  and  bear  were  an  indistinguishable  struggling  mass. 
Should  they  shoot  in  the  half-dark ,''  Then  the  Frenchman  uttered 
the  scream  of  one  in  death-throes  :  "  Shoot !  —  shoot !  —  shoot 
quick  !     She's  striking  my  face  !  —  she's  striking  my  face " 

And  before  the  words  had  died,  sharp  flashes  of  light  cleft  the 
dark  —  the  great  beast  rolled  over  with  a  coughing  growl,  and  the 
trappers  raised  their  comrade  from  the  ground. 

The  bear  had  had  him  on  his  back  between  her  teeth  by  the 
thick  chest  piece  of  his  double-breasted  buckskin.  Except  for  his 
face,  he  seemed  uninjured ;  but  down  that  face  the  great  brute  had 
drawn  the  claws  of  her  fore  paw. 

Ba'tiste  raised  his  hands  to  his  face. 

"Mon  Dieu!"  he  asked  thickly,  fumbling  with  both  hands, 
"what  is  done  to  my  eyes  ?     Is  the  fire  out  ,'*     I  cannot  see  !" 

Then  the  man  who  had  fought  like  a  demon  armed  with  only  a 
hunting-knife  fainted  because  of  what  his  hands  felt. 


Traitors  there  are  among  trappers  as  among  all  other  classes, 
men  like  those  who  deserted  Glass  on  the  Missouri,  and  Scott  on 
the  Platte,  and  how  many  others  whose  treachery  will  never  be 
known. 

But  Ba'tiste's  comrades  stayed  with  him  on  the  banks  of  the 
river  that  flows  into  the  Missouri.  One  cared  for  the  blind  man. 
The  other  two  foraged  for  game.  When  the  wounded  hunter 
could  be  moved,  they  put  him  in  a  canoe  and  hurried  downstream  to 
the  fur  post  before  the  freezing  of  the  rivers.  At  the  fur  post,  the 
doctor  did  what  he  could ;  but  a  doctor  cannot  restore  what  has 
been  torn  away.     The  next  spring,  Ba'tiste  was  put  on  a  pack  horse 


BA'TISTE,  THE  BEAR  HUNTER  233 

and  sent  to  his  relatives  at  the  Canadian  fur  post.  Here  his  sisters 
made  him  the  curtain  to  hang  round  his  helmet  and  set  him  to 
weaving  grass  mats  that  the  days  might  not  drag  so  wearily. 

Ask  Ba'tiste  whether  he  agrees  with  the  amateur  hunter  that 
bears  never  attack  unless  they  are  attacked,  that  they  would  never 
become  ravening  creatures  of  prey  unless  the  assaults  of  other 
creatures  taught  them  ferocity,  ask  Ba'tiste  this  and  something 
resembling  the  snarl  of  a  baited  beast  breaks  from  the  lipless  face 
under  the  veil : 

"S — s  —  sz! — "  with  a  quiver  of  inexpressible  rage.  "The 
bear  —  it  is  an  animal !  —  the  bear  !  —  it  is  a  beast !  —  toujours  ! 
—  the  bear!  —  it  is  a  beast!  —  always  —  always!"  And  his 
hands  clinch. 

Then  he  falls  to  carving  of  the  little  wooden  animals  and  weaving 
of  sad,  sad,  bitter  thoughts  into  the  warp  of  the  Indian  mat. 

Are  such  onslaughts  common  among  bears,  or  are  they  the  mad 
freaks  of  the  bear's  nature  ?  President  Roosevelt  tells  of  two 
soldiers  bitten  to  death  in  the  South-west ;  and  M.  I'Abbe  Dugast, 
of  St.  Boniface,  Manitoba,  incidentally  relates  an  experience  almost 
similar  to  that  of  Ba'tiste  which  occurred  in  the  North-west. 
Lest  Ba'tiste's  case  seem  overdrawn,  I  quote  the  Abbe's  words : 

"At  a  little  distance  Madame  Lajimoniere  and  the  other  women 
were  preparing  the  tents  for  the  night,  when  all  at  once  Bouvier 
gave  a  cry  of  distress  and  called  to  his  companions  to  help  him. 
At  the  first  shout,  each  hunter  seized  his  gun  and  prepared  to  de- 
fend himself  against  the  attack  of  an  enemy;  they  hurried  to  the 
other  side  of  the  ditch  to  see  what  was  the  matter  with  Bouvier, 
and  what  he  was  struggling  with.  They  had  no  idea  that  a  wild 
animal  would  come  near  the  fire  to  attack  a  man  even  under  cover 
of  night ;  for  fire  usually  has  the  effect  of  frightening  wild  beasts. 
However,  almost  before  the  four  hunters  knew  what  had  happened, 
they  saw  their  unfortunate  companion  dragged  into  the  woods  by 
a  bear  followed  by  her  two  cubs.  She  held  Bouvier  in  her  claws 
and  struck  him  savagely  in  the  face  to  stun  him.     As  soon  as  she 


234  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

saw  the  four  men  in  pursuit,  she  redoubled  her  fury  against  her 
prey,  tearing  his  face  with  her  claws.  M.  Lajimoniere,  who  was  an 
intrepid  hunter,  baited  her  with  the  butt  end  of  his  gun  to  make 
her  let  go  her  hold,  as  he  dared  not  shoot  for  fear  of  killing  the  man 
while  trying  to  save  him,  but  Bouvier,  who  felt  himself  being  choked, 
cried  with  all  his  strength  :*  Shoot ;  I  would  rather  be  shot  than 
eaten  alive!'  M.  Lajimoniere  pulled  the  trigger  as  close  to  the 
bear  as  possible,  wounding  her  mortally.  She  let  go  Bouvier  and 
before  her  strength  was  exhausted  made  a  wild  attack  upon  M. 
Lajimoniere,  who  expected  this  and  as  his  gun  had  only  one  barrel 
loaded,  he  ran  towards  the  canoe,  where  he  had  a  second  gun  fully 
charged.  He  had  hardly  seized  it  before  the  bear  reached  the 
shore  and  tried  to  climb  into  the  canoe,  but  fearing  no  longer  to 
wound  his  friend,  M.  Lajimoniere  aimed  full  at  her  breast  and  this 
time  she  was  killed  instantly.  As  soon  as  the  bear  was  no  longer 
to  be  feared,  Madame  Lajimoniere,  who  had  been  trembling  with 
fear  during  the  tumult,  went  to  raise  the  unfortunate  Bouvier, 
who  was  covered  with  wounds  and  nearly  dead.  The  bear  had 
torn  the  skin  from  his  face  with  her  nails  from  the  roots  of  his  hair 
to  the  lower  part  of  his  chin.  His  eyes  and  nose  were  gone  —  in 
fact  his  features  were  indiscernible  —  but  he  was  not  mortally 
injured.  His  wounds  were  dressed  as  well  as  the  circumstances 
would  permit,  and  thus  crippled  he  was  carried  to  the  Fort  of  the 
Prairies,  Madame  Lajimoniere  taking  care  of  him  all  through  the 
journey.  In  time  his  wounds  were  successfully  healed,  but  he  was 
blind  and  infirm  to  the  end  of  his  life.  He  dwelt  at  the  Fort  of  the 
Prairies  for  many  years,  but  when  the  first  missionaries  reached 
Red  River  in  1818,  he  persuaded  his  friends  to  send  him  to  St. 
Boniface  to  meet  the  priests  and  ended  his  days  in  M.  Provencher's 
house.  He  employed  his  time  during  the  last  years  of  his  life  in 
making  crosses  and  crucifixes,  blind  as  he  was,  but  he  never  made 
any  chefs  d'ceuvre." 

Such  is  bear-hunting  and  such  is  the  nature  of  the  bear.     And 
these  things  are  not  of  the  past.     Wherever  long-range  repeaters 


BATISTE,  THE  BEAR  HUNTER  235 

have  not  put  the  fear  of  man  in  the  animal  heart,  the  bear  is  the 
aggressor.  Even  as  I  write  comes  word  from  a  little  frontier  fur 
post  which  I  visited  in  1901,  of  a  seven-year-old  boy  being  waylaid 
and  devoured  by  a  grizzly  only  four  miles  back  from  a  transconti- 
nental railway.  This  is  the  second  death  from  the  unprovoked 
attacks  of  bears  within  a  month  in  that  country  —  and  that  month, 
the  month  of  August,  1902,  when  sentimental  ladies  and  gentle- 
men many  miles  away  from  danger  were  sagely  discussing  whether 
the  bear  is  naturally  ferocious  or  not  —  whether,  in  a  word,  it  is 
altogether  humane  to  hunt  hears} 

^  Since  writing  the  above,  I  have  just  come  back  from  eighteen  weeks  In  the  North 
Country.  In  one  camp,  our  cook-tent  was  cleaned  out  six  nights  out  of  seven  by  a  bear. 
On  a  fourteen-mile  tramp  down  a  mountain,  on  the  peak  of  which  we  had  slept  for  the  night, 
we  met  a  black  bear.  I  am  not  sure  which  of  us  retired  the  more  quickly;  for  we  had  no 
firearms;  but  the  bear  lay  in  the  underbrush  till  we  passed.  That  night  he  came  down  and 
refused  to  be  driven  from  the  cook-tent.  Firearms  were  forbidden  in  that  National  Park ; 
so  we  did  the  retiring  —  all  of  which  does  not  seem  to  prove  that  bear  life  is  becoming  rapidly 
extinct,  certainly  not  in  Jasper  Park,  where  the  intruder  boldly  posed  for  a  flashlight  photo- 
graph.    It  gave  me  great  satisfaction  later  to  buy  two  black  bear  pelts. 


CHAPTER  V 
JOHN  COLTER  — FREE  TRAPPER 

Long  before  sunrise  hunters  were  astir  in  the  mountains. 

The  Crows  were  robbers,  the  Blackfeet  murderers ;  and  scouts 
of  both  tribes  haunted  every  mountain  defile  where  a  white  hunter 
might  pass  with  provisions  and  peltries  which  these  rascals  could 
plunder. 

The  trappers  circumvented  their  foes  by  setting  the  traps  after 
nightfall  and  lifting  the  game  before  daybreak. 

Night  in  the  mountains  was  full  of  a  mystery  that  the  imagina- 
tion of  the  Indians  peopled  with  terrors  enough  to  frighten  them 
away.  The  sudden  stilling  of  mountain  torrent  and  noisy  leaping 
cataract  at  sundown  when  the  thaw  of  the  upper  snows  ceased,  the 
smothered  roar  of  rivers  under  ice,  the  rush  of  whirlpools  through 
the  blackness  of  some  far  canon,  the  crashing  of  rocks  thrown  down 
by  unknown  forces,  the  shivering  echo  that  multiplied  itself  a 
thousandfold  and  ran  "rocketing"  from  peak  to  peak  startling  the 
silences  —  these  things  filled  the  Indian  with  superstitious  fears. 

The  gnomes,  called  in  trapper's  vernacular  "hoodoos"  —  great 
pillars  of  sandstone  higher  than  a  house,  left  standing  in  valleys  by 
prehistoric  floods  —  were  to  the  Crows  and  Blackfeet  petrified 
giants  that  only  awakened  at  night  to  hurl  down  rocks  on  intruding 
mortals.  And  often  the  quiver  of  a  shadow  in  the  night  wind  gave 
reality  to  the  Indian's  fears.  The  purr  of  streams  over  rocky 
bed  was  whispering,  the  queer  quaking  echoes  of  falling  rocks  were 
giants  at  war,  and  the  mists  rising  from  swaying  waterfalls,  spirit- 
forms  portending  death. 

Morning  came  more  ghostly  among  the  peaks. 

236 


JOHN  COLTER  — FREE  TRAPPER     237 

Thick  white  clouds  banked  the  mountains  from  peak  to  base, 
blotting  out  every  scar  and  tor  as  a  sponge  might  wash  a  slate. 
Valleys  lay  blanketed  in  smoking  mist.  As  the  sun  came  gradually 
up  to  the  horizon  far  away  east  behind  the  mountains,  scarp  and 
pinnacle  butted  through  the  fog,  stood  out  bodily  from  the  mist, 
seemed  to  move  like  living  giants  from  the  cloud  banks.  "How 
could  they  do  that  if  they  were  not  alive.?"  asked  the  Indian. 
Elsewhere,  shadows  came  from  sun,  moon,  starlight,  or  camp  fire. 
But  in  these  valleys  were  pencilled  shadows  of  peaks  upside  down, 
shadows  all  the  colors  of  the  rainbow  pointing  to  the  bottom  of 
the  green  Alpine  lakes,  hours  and  hours  before  any  sun  had  risen 
to  cause  the  shadows.  All  this  meant  "bad  medicine"  to  the 
Indian,  or,  in  white  man's  language,  mystery. 

Unless  they  were  foraging  in  large  bands,  Crows  and  Blackfeet 
shunned  the  mountains  after  nightfall.  That  gave  the  white 
man  a  chance  to  trap  in  safety. 

Early  one  morning  two  white  men  slipped  out  of  their  sequestered 
cabin  built  in  hiding  of  the  hills  at  the  headwaters  of  the  Missouri. 
Under  covert  of  brushwood  lay  a  long  odd-shaped  canoe,  sharp 
enough  at  the  prow  to  cleave  the  narrowest  waters  between  rocks, 
so  sharp  that  French  voyageurs  gave  this  queer  craft  the  name 
^^canot  a  bee  (Testurgeon^^  —  that  is,  a  canoe  like  the  nose  of  a  stur- 
geon. This  American  adaptation  of  the  Frenchman's  craft  was 
not  of  birch-bark.  That  would  be  too  frail  to  essay  the  rock- 
ribbed  caiions  of  the  mountain  streams.  It  was  usually  a  common 
dugout,  hollowed  from  a  cottonwood  or  other  light  timber,  with 
such  an  angular  narrow  prow  that  it  could  take  the  sheerest  dip 
and  mount  the  steepest  wave-crest  where  a  rounder  boat  would 
fill  and  swamp.  Dragging  this  from  cover,  the  two  white  men 
pushed  out  on  the  Jefferson  Fork,  dipping  now  on  this  side,  now 
on  that,  using  the  reversible  double-bladed  paddles  which  only 
an  amphibious  boatman  can  manage.  The  two  men  shot  out  in 
midstream,  where  the  mists  would  hide  them  from  each  shore ; 
a  moment  later  the  white  fog  had  enfolded  them,  and  there  was  no 


238  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

trace  of  human  presence  but  the  trail  of  dimpling  ripples  in  the 
wake  of  the  canoe. 

No  talking,  no  whistling,  not  a  sound  to  betray  them.  And 
there  were  good  reasons  why  these  men  did  not  wish  their  presence 
known.  One  was  Potts,  the  other  John  Colter.  Both  had  been 
with  the  Lewis  and  Clark  exploring  party  of  i8o4-'o5,  when  a 
Blackfoot  brave  had  been  slain  for  horse-thieving  by  the  first  white 
men  to  cross  the  Upper  Missouri.  Besides,  the  year  before  coming 
to  the  Jefferson,  Colter  had  been  with  the  Missouri  Company's 
fur  brigade  under  Manuel  Lisa,  and  had  gone  to  the  Crows  as  an 
emissary  from  the  fur  company.  While  with  the  Crows,  a  battle 
had  taken  place  against  the  Blackfeet,  in  which  they  suffered  heavy 
loss  owing  to  Colter's  prowess.  That  made  the  Blackfeet  sworn 
enemies  to  Colter. 

Turning  off  the  Jefferson,  the  trappers  headed  their  canoe  up 
a  side  stream,  probably  one  of  those  marshy  reaches  where  beavers 
have  formed  a  swamp  by  damming  up  the  current  of  a  sluggish 
stream.  Such  quiet  waters  are  favorite  resorts  for  beaver  and 
mink  and  marten  and  pekan.  Setting  their  traps  only  after  night- 
fall, the  two  men  could  not  possibly  have  put  out  more  than  forty 
or  fifty.  Thirty  traps  are  a  heavy  day's  work  for  one  man.  Six 
prizes  out  of  thirty  are  considered  a  wonderful  run  of  luck;  but 
the  empty  traps  must  be  examined  as  carefully  as  the  successful 
ones.  Many  that  have  been  mauled,  "scented"  by  a  beaver  scout 
and  left,  must  be  replaced.  Others  must  have  fresh  bait;  others, 
again,  carried  to  better  grounds  where  there  are  more  game  signs. 

Either  this  was  a  very  lucky  morning  and  the  men  were  de- 
tained taking  fresh  pelts,  or  it  was  a  very  unlucky  morning  and 
the  men  had  decided  to  trap  farther  upstream ;  for  when  the 
mists  began  to  rise,  the  hunters  were  still  in  their  canoe.  Leaving 
the  beaver  meadow,  they  continued  paddling  upstream  away  from 
the  Jefferson.  A  more  hidden  watercourse  they  could  hardly  have 
found.  The  swampy  beaver-runs  narrowed,  the  shores  rose  higher 
and  higher  into  rampart  walls,  and  the  dark-shadowed  waters  came 


JOHN  COLTER  — FREE  TRAPPER  239 

leaping  down  in  the  lumpy,  uneven  runnels  of  a  small  canon.  You 
can  always  tell  whether  the  waters  of  a  caiion  are  compressed  or 
not,  whether  they  come  from  broad,  swampy  meadows  or  clear 
snow  streams  smaller  than  the  canon.  The  marsh  waters  roll 
down  swift  and  black  and  turbid,  raging  against  the  crowding  walls ; 
the  snow  streams  leap  clear  and  foaming  as  champagne,  and  are  in 
too  great  a  hurry  to  stop  and  quarrel  with  the  rocks.  It  is  al- 
together likely  these  men  recognized  swampy  water,  and  were 
ascending  the  cafion  in  search  of  a  fresh  beaver-marsh;  or  they 
would  not  have  continued  paddling  six  miles  above  the  Jefferson 
with  daylight  growing  plainer  at  every  mile.  First  the  mist  rose 
like  a  smoky  exhalation  from  the  river;  then  it  flaunted  across 
the  rampart  walls  in  banners ;  then  the  far  mountain  peaks  took 
form  against  the  sky,  islands  in  a  sea  of  fog ;  then  the  cloud  banks 
were  floating  in  mid-heaven  blindingly  white  from  a  sun  that  painted 
each  caiion  wall  in  the  depths  of  the  water. 

How  much  farther  would  the  caiion  lead  ?  Should  they  go 
higher  up  or  not  ?  Was  it  wooded  or  clear  plain  above  the  walls  ? 
The  man  paused.     What  was  that  noise  ? 

"Like  buffalo,"  said  Potts. 

"Might  be  Blackfeet,"  answered  Colter. 

No.  What  would  Blackfeet  be  doing,  riding  at  a  pace  to  make 
such  thunder  so  close  to  a  caiion  ?  It  was  only  a  buffalo  herd 
stampeding  on  the  annual  southern  run.  Again  Colter  urged  that 
the  noise  might  be  from  Indians.  It  would  be  safer  for  them  to  re- 
treat at  once.  At  which  Potts  wanted  to  know  if  Colter  were 
afraid,  using  a  stronger  word  —  "coward." 

Afraid  ?  Colter  afraid  ?  Colter  who  had  remained  behind 
Lewis  and  Clark's  men  to  trap  alone  in  the  wilds  for  nearly  two 
years,  who  had  left  Manuel  Lisa's  brigade  to  go  alone  among  the 
thieving  Crows,  whose  leadership  had  helped  the  Crows  to  defeat 
the  Blackfeet  ? 

Anyway,  it  would  now  be  as  dangerous  to  go  back  as  forward. 
They  plainly  couldn't  land  here.     Let  them  go  ahead  where  the 


240  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

walls  seemed  to  slope  down  to  shore.  Two  or  three  strokes  sent 
the  canoe  round  an  elbow  of  rock  into  the  narrow  course  of  a  creek. 
Instantly  out  sprang  five  or  six  hundred  Blackfeet  warriors  with 
weapons  levelled,  guarding  both  sides  of  the  stream. 

An  Indian  scout  had  discovered  the  trail  of  the  white  men  and 
sent  the  whole  band  scouring  ahead  to  intercept  them  at  this  narrow 
pass.  The  chief  stepped  forward,  and  with  signals  that  were  a 
command  beckoned  the  hunters  ashore. 

As  is  nearly  always  the  case,  the  rash  man  was  the  one  to  lose 
his  head,  the  cautious  man  the  one  to  keep  his  presence  of  mind. 
Potts  was  for  an  attempt  at  flight,  when  every  bow  on  both  sides 
of  the  river  would  have  let  fly  a  shot.  Colter  was  for  accepting 
the  situation,  trusting  to  his  own  wit  for  subsequent  escape. 

Colter,  who  was  acting  as  steersman,  sent  the  canoe  ashore. 
Bottom  had  not  grated  before  a  savage  snatched  Potts's  rifle  from 
his  hands.  Springing  ashore.  Colter  forcibly  wrested  the  weapon 
back  and  coolly  handed  it  to  Potts. 

But  Potts  had  lost  all  the  rash  courage  of  a  moment  before, 
and  with  one  push  sent  the  canoe  into  midstream.  Colter  shouted 
at  him  to  come  back  —  come  back !  Indians  have  more  effective 
arguments.  A  bow-string  twanged,  and  Potts  screamed  out, 
"Colter,  I  am  wounded  !" 

Again  Colter  urged  him  to  land.  The  wound  turned  Potts's 
momentary  fright  to  a  paroxysm  of  rage.  Aiming  his  rifle,  he 
shot  his  Indian  assailant  dead.  If  it  was  torture  that  he  feared, 
that  act  assured  him  at  least  a  quick  death  ;  for,  in  Colter's  language, 
man  and  boat  were  instantaneously  "made  a  riddle  of." 

No  man  admires  courage  more  than  the  Indian ;  and  the  Black- 
feet  recognized  in  their  captive  one  who  had  been  ready  to  defend 
his  comrade  against  them  all,  and  who  had  led  the  Crows  to  victory 
against  their  own  band. 

The  prisoner  surrendered  his  weapons.  He  was  stripped  naked, 
but  showed  neither  sign  of  fear  nor  made  a  move  to  escape.  Evi- 
dently the  Blackfeet  could  have  rare  sport  with  this  game  white 


JOHN   COLTER  — FREE  TRAPPER  241 

man.  His  life  in  the  Indian  country  had  taught  him  a  few  words  of 
the  Blackfoot  language.  He  heard  them  conferring  as  to  how  he 
should  be  tortured  to  atone  for  all  that  the  Blackfeet  had  suffered 
at  white  men's  hands.  One  warrior  suggested  that  the  hunter  be 
set  up  as  a  target  and  shot  at.     Would  he  then  be  so  brave  f 

But  the  chief  shook  his  head.  That  was  not  game  enough 
sport  for  Blackfeet  warriors.  That  would  be  letting  a  man  die 
passively.  And  how  this  man  could  fight  if  he  had  an  opportunity  ! 
How  he  could  resist  torture  if  he  had  any  chance  of  escaping  the 
torture  1 

But  Colter  stood  impassive  and  listened.  Doubtless  he  re- 
gretted having  left  the  well-defended  brigades  of  the  fur  companies 
to  hunt  alone  in  the  wilderness.  But  the  fascination  of  the  wild 
life  is  as  a  gambler's  vice  —  the  more  a  man  has,  the  more  he  wants. 
Had  not  Colter  crossed  the  Rockies  with  Lewis  and  Clark  and  spent 
two  years  in  the  mountain  fastnesses  f  Yet  when  he  reached  the 
Mandans  on  the  way  home,  the  revulsion  against  all  the  trammels 
of  civilization  moved  him  so  strongly  that  he  asked  permission  to 
return  to  the  wilderness,  where  he  spent  two  more  years.  Had 
he  not  set  out  for  St.  Louis  a  second  time,  met  Lisa  coming  up  the 
Missouri  with  a  brigade  of  hunters,  and  for  the  third  time  turned 
his  face  to  the  wilderness  ?  Had  he  not  wandered  with  the  Crows, 
fought  the  Blackfeet,  gone  down  to  St.  Louis,  and  been  impelled 
by  the  strange  impulse  of  adventure  which  was  to  the  hunter  what 
the  instinct  of  migration  is,  to  bird  and  fish  and  buffalo  and  all 
wild  things  —  to  go  yet  again  to  the  wilderness  ?  Such  was  the 
passion  for  the  wilds  that  ruled  the  life  of  all  free  trappers. 

The  free  trappers  formed  a  class  by  themselves. 

Other  trappers  either  hunted  on  a  salary  of  $200,  ^300,  ^400  a 
year,  or  on  shares,  like  fishermen  of  the  Grand  Banks  outfitted 
by  "planters,"  or  like  Western  prospectors  outfitted  by  companies 
that  supply  provisions,  boats  and  horses,  expecting  in  return  the 
major  share  of  profits.    The  free  trappers  fitted  themselves  out, 


242  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

owed  allegiance  to  no  man,  hunted  where  and  how  they  chose, 
and  refused  to  carry  their  furs  to  any  fort  but  the  one  that  paid  the 
highest  prices.  For  the  mangeurs  de  lard,  as  they  called  the  fur  com- 
pany raftsmen,  they  had  a  supreme  contempt.  For  the  methods 
of  the  fur  companies,  putting  rivals  to  sleep  with  laudanum  or 
bullet  and  ever  stirring  the  savages  up  to  warfare,  the  free  trappers 
had  a  rough  and  emphatically  expressed  loathing. 

The  crime  of  corrupting  natives  can  never  be  laid  to  the  free 
trapper.  He  carried  neither  poison,  nor  what  was  worse  than 
poison  to  the  Indian  —  whiskey  —  among  the  native  tribes.  The 
free  trapper  lived  on  good  terms  with  the  Indian,  because  his  safety 
depended  on  the  Indian.  Renegades  like  Bird,  the  deserter  from 
the  Hudson's  Bay  Company,  or  Rose,  who  abandoned  the  Astorians, 
or  Beckwourth  of  apocryphal  fame,  might  cast  off  civilization  and 
become  Indian  chiefs ;  but,  after  all,  these  men  were  not  guilty 
of  half  so  hideous  crimes  as  the  great  fur  companies  of  boasted 
respectability.  Wyeth  of  Boston,  and  Captain  Bonneville  of  the 
army,  whose  underlings  caused  such  murderous  slaughter  among 
the  Root  Diggers,  were  not  free  trappers  in  the  true  sense  of  the 
term.  Wyeth  was  an  enthusiast  who  caught  the  fever  of  the 
wilds ;  and  Captain  Bonneville,  a  gay  adventurer,  whose  men 
shot  down  more  Indians  in  one  trip  than  all  the  free  trappers  of 
America  shot  in  a  century.  As  for  the  desperado  Harvey,  whom 
Larpenteur  reports  shooting  Indians  like  dogs,  his  crimes  were 
committed  under  the  walls  of  the  American  Fur  Company's  fort. 
MacLellan  and  Crooks  and  John  Day  —  before  they  joined  the 
Astorians  —  and  Boone  and  Carson  and  Colter,  are  names  that 
stand  for  the  true  type  of  free  trapper. 

The  free  trapper  went  among  the  Indians  with  no  defence  but 
good  behavior  and  the  keenness  of  his  wit.  Whatever  crimes 
the  free  trapper  might  be  guilty  of  towards  white  men,  he  was 
guilty  of  few  towards  the  Indians.  Consequently,  free  trappers 
were  all  through  Minnesota  and  the  region  westward  of  the  Missis- 
sippi forty  years  before  the  fur  companies  dared  to  venture  among 


JOHN  COLTER  — FREE  TRAPPER     243 

the  Sioux.  Fisher  and  Fraser  and  Woods  knew  the  Upper  Missouri 
before  1806;  and  Brugiere  had  been  on  the  Columbia  many  years 
before  the  Astorians  came  in  181 1. 

One  crime  the  free  trappers  may  be  charged  with  —  a  reckless 
waste  of  precious  furs.  The  great  companies  always  encouraged 
the  Indians  not  to  hunt  more  game  than  they  needed  for  the  season's 
support.  And  no  Indian  hunter,  uncorrupted  by  white  men, 
would  molest  game  while  the  mothers  were  with  their  young. 
Famine  had  taught  them  the  punishment  that  follows  reckless 
hunting.  But  the  free  trappers  were  here  to-day  and  away  to- 
morrow, like  a  Chinaman,  to  take  all  they  could  get  regardless  of  re- 
sults ;  and  the  results  were  the  rapid  extinction  of  fur-bearing  game. 

Always  there  were  more  free  trappers  in  the  United  States 
than  in  Canada.  Before  the  union  of  Hudson's  Bay  and  Nor' 
Wester  in  Canada,  all  classes  of  trappers  were  absorbed  by  one 
of  the  two  great  companies.  After  the  union,  when  the  monopoly 
enjoyed  by  the  Hudson's  Bay  did  not  permit  it  literally  to  drive  a 
free  trapper  out,  it  could  always  "freeze"  him  out  by  withholding 
supplies  in  its  great  white  northern  wildernesses,  or  by  refusing 
to  give  him  transport.  When  the  monopoly  passed  away  in  1871, 
free  trappers  pressed  north  from  the  Missouri,  where  their  methods 
had  exterminated  game,  and  carried  on  the  same  ruthless  warfare 
on  the  Saskatchewan.  North  of  the  Saskatchewan,  where  very 
remoteness  barred  strangers  out,  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company  still 
held  undisputed  sway ;  and  Lord  Strathcona,  the  governor  of  the 
company,  was  able  to  say  a  few  years  ago,  "the  fur  trade  is  quite 
as  large  as  ever  it  was." 

Among  free  hunters,  Canada  had  only  one  commanding  figure 
—  John  Johnston  of  the  Soo,  who  settled  at  La  Pointe  on  Lake 
Superior  in  1792,  formed  league  with  Wabogish,  "the  White  Fisher," 
and  became  the  most  famous  trader  of  the  Lakes.  His  life,  too, 
was  almost  as  eventful  as  Colter's.  A  member  of  the  Irish  nobility, 
some  secret  which  he  never  chose  to  reveal  drove  him  to  the  wilds. 
Wabogish,  the  "White  Fisher,"  had  a  daughter  who  refused  the 


244  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

wooings  of  all  her  tribe's  warriors.  In  vain  Johnston  sued  for  her 
hand.  Old  Waboglsh  bade  the  white  man  go  sell  his  Irish  estates 
and  prove  his  devotion  by  buying  as  vast  estates  in  America. 
Johnston  took  the  old  chief  at  his  word,  and  married  the  haughty 
princess  of  the  Lake.  When  the  War  of  1812  set  all  the  tribes  by 
the  ears,  Johnston  and  his  wife  had  as  thrilling  adventures  as  ever 
Colter  knew  among  the  Blackfeet. 

Many  a  free  trapper,  and  partner  of  the  fur  companies  as  well, 
secured  his  own  safety  by  marrying  the  daughter  of  a  chief,  as 
Johnston  had.  These  were  not  the  lightly-come,  llghtly-go  affairs 
of  the  vagrant  adventurer.  If  the  husband  had  not  cast  off  civiliza- 
tion like  a  garment,  the  wife  had  to  put  it  on  like  a  garment ;  and  not 
an  ill-fitting  garment  either,  when  one  considers  that  the  convents 
of  the  quiet  nuns  dotted  the  wilderness  like  oases  in  a  desert  almost 
contemporaneous  with  the  fur  trade.  If  the  trapper  had  not  sunk 
to  the  level  of  the  savages,  the  little  daughter  of  the  chief  was 
educated  by  the  nuns  for  her  new  position.  I  recall  several  cases 
where  the  child  was  sent  across  the  Atlantic  to  an  English  governess 
so  that  the  equality  would  be  literal  and  not  a  sentimental  fiction. 
And  yet,  on  no  subject  has  the  western  fur  trader  received  more 
persistent  and  unjust  condemnation.  The  heroism  that  culmi- 
nated in  the  union  of  Pocahontas  with  a  noted  Virginian  won 
applause,  and  almost  similar  circumstances  dictated  the  union  of 
fur  traders  with  the  daughters  of  Indian  chiefs ;  but  because  the 
fur  trader  has  not  posed  as  a  sentimentalist,  he  has  become  more 
or  less  of  a  target  for  the  index  finger  of  the  Pharisee.^ 

*  Would  not  such  critics  think  twice  before  passing  judgment  if  they  recalled  that  General 
Parker  was  a  full-blood  Indian;  that  if  Johnston  had  not  married  Wabogish's  daughter  and 
if  Johnston's  daughter  had  not  preferred  to  marry  Schoolcraft  instead  of  going  to  her  rela- 
tives of  the  Irish  nobility,  Longfellow  would  have  written  no  Hiawatha?  Would  they  not 
hesitate  before  slurring  men  like  Premier  Norquay  of  Manitoba  and  the  famous  MacKenzies, 
those  princes  of  fur  trade  from  St.  Louis  to  the  Arctic,  and  David  Thompson,  the  great  ex- 
plorer ?  Do  they  forget  that  Lord  Strathcona,  one  of  the  foremost  peers  of  Britain,  is  related 
to  the  proudest  race  of  plain-rangers  that  ever  scoured  the  West,  the  Bois-Brules?  The 
writer  knows  the  West  from  only  fifteen  years  of  life  and  travel  there ;  yet  with  that  imperfect 
knowledge  cannot  recall  a  single  fur  post  without  some  tradition  of  an  unfaraed  Pocahontas. 


JOHN  COLTER  — FREE  TRAPPER     245 

North  of  the  boundary  the  free  trapper  had  small  chance  against 
the  Hudson's  Bay  Company.  As  long  as  the  slow-going  Mackinaw- 
Company,  itself  chiefly  recruited  from  free  trappers,  ruled  at  the 
junction  of  the  Lakes,  the  free  trappers  held  the  hunting-grounds 
of  the  Mississippi ;  but  after  the  Mackinaw  was  absorbed  by  the 
aggressive  American  Fur  Company,  the  free  hunters  were  pushed 
westward.  On  the  Lower  Missouri  competition  raged  from  18 10, 
so  that  circumstances  drove  the  free  trapper  westward  to  the 
mountains,  where  he  is  hunting  in  the  twentieth  century  as  his 
prototype  hunted  two  hundred  years  ago. 

In  Canada  —  of  course  after  1870  —  he  entered  the  mountains 
chiefly  by  three  passes :  (i)  Yellow  Head  Pass  southward  of  the 
Athabasca ;  (2)  the  narrow  gap  where  the  Bow  emerges  to  the 
plains  —  that  is,  the  river  where  the  Indians  found  the  best  wood 
for  the  making  of  bows;  (3)  north  of  the  boundary,  through  that 
narrow  defile  overtowered  by  the  lonely  flat-crowned  peak  called 
Crow's  Nest  Mountain  —  that  is,  where  the  fugitive  Crows  took 
refuge  from  the  pursuing  Blackfeet. 

In  the  United  States,  the  free  hunters  also  approached  the 
mountains  by  three  main  routes  :  (i)  Up  the  Platte ;  (2)  westward 
from  the  Missouri  across  the  plains  ;  (3)  by  the  Three  Forks  of  the 
Missouri.  For  instance,  it  was  coming  down  the  Platte  that  poor 
Scott's  canoe  was  overturned,  his  powder  lost,  and  his  rifles  rendered 
useless.  Game  had  retreated  to  the  mountains  with  spring's 
advance.  Berries  were  not  ripe  by  the  time  trappers  were  descend- 
ing with  their  winter's  hunt.  Scott  and  his  famishing  men  could 
not  find  edible  roots.  Each  day  Scott  weakened.  There  was  no 
food.  Finally,  Scott  had  strength  to  go  no  farther.  His  men  had 
found  tracks  of  some  other  hunting  party  far  to  the  fore.  They 
thought  that,  in  any  case,  he  could  not  live.  What  ought  they  to 
do  ?  Hang  back  and  starve  with  him,  or  hasten  forward  while 
they  had  strength,  to  the  party  whose  track  they  had  espied  ?  On 
pretence  of  seeking  roots,  they  deserted  the  helpless  man.  Per- 
haps they  did  not  come  up  with  the  advance  party  till  they  were 


246  THE  FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

sure  that  Scott  must  have  died ;  for  they  did  not  go  back  to  his  aid. 
The  next  spring  when  these  same  hunters  went  up  the  Platte,  they 
found  the  skeleton  of  poor  Scott  sixty  miles  from  the  place  where 
they  had  left  him.  The  terror  that  spurred  the  emaciated  man  to 
drag  himself  all  this  weary  distance  can  barely  be  conceived ;  but 
such  were  the  fearful  odds  taken  by  every  free  trapper  who  went 
up  the  Platte,  across  the  parched  plains,  or  to  the  headwaters  of 
the  Missouri. 

The  time  for  the  free  trappers  to  go  out  was,  in  Indian  language, 
"when  the  leaves  began  to  fall."  If  a  mighty  hunter  like  Colter, 
the  trapper  was  to  the  savage  "big  Indian  me"  ;  if  only  an  ordinary 
vagrant  of  woods  and  streams,  the  white  man  was  "big  knife  you," 
in  distinction  to  the  red  man  carrying  only  primitive  weapons. 
Very  often  the  free  trapper  slipped  away  from  the  fur  post  secretly, 
or  at  night ;  for  there  were  questions  of  licenses  which  he  disregarded, 
knowing  well  that  the  buyer  of  his  furs  would  not  inform  for  fear 
of  losing  the  pelts.  Also  and  more  important  in  counselling  caution, 
the  powerful  fur  companies  had  spies  on  the  watch  to  dog  the  free 
trapper  to  his  hunting-grounds  ;  and  rival  hunters  would  not  hesitate 
to  bribe  the  natives  with  a  keg  of  rum  for  all  the  peltries  which 
the  free  trapper  had  already  bought  by  advancing  provisions  to 
Indian  hunters.  Indeed,  rival  hunters  have  not  hesitated  to  bribe 
the  savages  to  pillage  and  murder  the  free  trapper;  for  there  was 
no  law  in  the  fur-trading  country,  and  no  one  to  ask  what  became 
of  the  free  hunter  who  went  alone  into  the  wilderness  and  never 
returned. 

Going  out  alone,  or  with  only  one  partner,  the  free  hunter 
encumbered  himself  with  few  provisions.  Two  dollars'  worth  of 
tobacco  would  buy  a  thousand  pounds  of  "jerked"  buffalo  meat, 
and  a  few  gaudy  trinkets  for  a  squaw  all  the  pemmican  white  men 
could  use. 

Going  by  the  river  routes,  four  days  out  from  St.  Louis  brought 
the  trapper  into  regions  of  danger.  Indian  scouts  hung  on  the 
watch  among  the  sedge  of  the  river  bank.     One  thin  line  of  upcurl- 


JOHN  COLTER  — FREE  TRAPPER     247 

ing  smoke,  or  a  piece  of  string  —  hahiche  (leather  cord,  called  by 
the  Indians  assapapish)  —  fluttering  from  a  shrub,  or  little  sticks 
casually  dropped  on  the  river  bank  pointing  one  way,  all  were 
signs  that  told  of  marauding  bands.  Some  birch  tree  was  notched 
with  an  Indian  cipher  —  a  hunter  had  passed  that  way  and  claimed 
the  bark  for  his  next  year's  canoe.  Or  the  mark  might  be  on  a 
Cottonwood  —  some  man  wanted  this  tree  for  a  dugout.  Perhaps 
a  stake  stood  with  a  mark  at  the  entrance  to  a  beaver-marsh  — 
some  hunter  had  found  this  ground  first  and  warned  all  other 
trappers  off  by  the  code  of  wilderness  honor.  Notched  tree- 
trunks  told  of  some  runner  gone  across  country,  blazing  a  trail 
by  which  he  could  return.  Had  a  piece  of  fungus  been  torn  from 
a  hemlock  log .?  There  were  Indians  near,  and  the  squaw  had 
taken  the  thing  to  whiten  leather.  If  a  sudden  puff  of  black  smoke 
spread  out  in  a  cone  above  some  distant  tree,  it  was  an  ominous 
sign  to  the  trapper.  The  Indians  had  set  fire  to  the  inside  of  a 
punky  trunk  and  the  shooting  flames  were  a  rallying  call. 

In  the  most  perilous  regions  the  trapper  travelled  only  after 
nightfall  with  muffled  paddles  —  that  is,  muffled  where  the  handle 
might  strike  the  gunwale.  Camp  fires  warned  him  which  side  of 
the  river  to  avoid;  and  often  a  trapper  slipping  past  under  the 
shadow  of  one  bank  saw  hobgoblin  figures  dancing  round  the  flames 
of  the  other  bank  —  Indians  celebrating  their  scalp  dance.  In 
these  places  the  white  hunter  ate  cold  meals  to  avoid  lighting  a 
fire ;  or  if  he  lighted  a  fire,  after  cooking  his  meal  he  withdrew  at 
once  and  slept  at  a  distance  from  the  light  that  might  betray  him. 

The  greatest  risk  of  travelling  after  dark  during  the  spring 
floods  arose  from  what  the  voyageurs  called  emharras  —  trees  torn 
from  the  banks  sticking  in  the  soft  bottom  like  derelicts  with 
branches  to  entangle  the  trapper's  craft;  but  the  emharras  often 
befriended  the  solitary  white  man.  Usually  he  slept  on  shore 
rolled  in  a  buifalo-robe ;  but  if  Indian  signs  were  fresh,  he  moored 
his  canoe  in  mid-current  and  slept  under  hiding  of  the  driftwood. 
Friendly  Indians  did  not  conceal  themselves,  but  came  to  the  river 


248  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

bank  waving  a  buffalo-robe  and  spreading  it  out  to  signal  a  welcome 
to  the  white  man ;  when  the  trapper  would  go  ashore,  whiff  pipes 
with  the  chiefs  and  perhaps  spend  the  night  listening  to  the  tales  of 
exploits  which  each  notch  on  the  calumet  typified.  Incidents 
that  meant  nothing  to  other  men  were  full  of  significance  to  the 
lone  voyageur  through  hostile  lands.  Always  the  spring  floods 
drifted  down  numbers  of  dead  buffalo ;  and  the  carrion  birds  sat 
on  the  trees  of  the  shore  with  their  wings  spread  out  to  dry  in  the 
sun.  The  sudden  flacker  of  a  rising  flock  betrayed  something 
prowling  in  ambush  on  the  bank ;  so  did  the  splash  of  a  snake  from 
overhanging  branches  into  the  water. 

Different  sorts  of  dangers  beset  the  free  trapper  crossing  the 
plains  to  the  mountains.  The  fur  company  brigades  always  had 
escort  of  armed  guard  and  provision  packers.  The  free  trappers 
went  alone  or  in  pairs,  picketing  horses  to  the  saddle  overlaid  with  a 
buffalo-robe  for  a  pillow,  cooking  meals  on  chip  fires,  using  a  slow- 
burning  wormwood  bark  for  matches,  and  trusting  their  horses  or 
dog  to  give  the  alarm  if  the  bands  of  coyotes  hovering  through  the 
night  dusk  approached  too  near.  On  the  high  rolling  plains, 
hostiles  could  be  descried  at  a  distance,  coming  over  the  horizon 
head  and  top  first  like  the  peak  of  a  sail,  or  emerging  from  the 
"coolies"  —  dried  sloughs  —  like  wolves  from  the  earth.  Enemies 
could  be  seen  soon  enough ;  but  where  could  the  trapper  hide  on 
bare  prairie  }  He  didn't  attempt  to  hide.  He  simply  set  fire  to  the 
prairie  and  took  refuge  on  the  lee  side.  That  device  failing,  he 
was  at  his  enemies'  mercy. 

On  the  plains,  the  greatest  danger  was  from  lack  of  water.  At 
one  season  the  trapper  might  know  where  to  find  good  camping 
streams.  The  next  year  when  he  came  to  those  streams  they  were 
dry. 

"After  leaving  the  buffalo  meadows  a  dreadful  scarcity  of 
water  ensued,"  wrote  Charles  MacKenzIe,  of  the  famous  Mac- 
Kenzie  clan.  He  was  journeying  north  from  the  Missouri.  "We 
had  to  alter  our  course  and  steer  to  a  distant  lake.     When  we 


JOHN  COLTER  — FREE  TRAPPER     249 

got  there  we  found  the  lake  dry.  However,  we  dug  a  pit  which 
produced  a  kind  of  stinking  liquid  which  we  all  drank.  It  was 
salt  and  bitter,  caused  an  inflammation  of  the  mouth,  left  a  dis-- 
agreeable  roughness  of  the  throat,  and  seemed  to  increase  our 
thirst.  .  .  .  We  passed  the  night  under  great  uneasiness.  Next 
day  we  continued  our  journey,  but  not  a  drop  of  water  was  to  be 
found,  .  .  .  and  our  distress  became  insupportable.  .  .  .  All  at 
once  our  horses  became  so  unruly  that  we  could  not  manage  them. 
We  observed  that  they  showed  an  inclination  towards  a  hill  which 
was  close  by.  It  struck  me  that  they  might  have  scented  water. 
...  I  ascended  to  the  top,  where,  to  my  great  joy,  I  discovered  a 
small  pool.  .  .  .  My  horse  plunged  in  before  I  could  prevent 
him,  .  .  .  and  all  the  horses  drank  to  excess." 

^^  The  plains  across"  —  which  was  a  western  expression  mean- 
ing the  end  of  that  part  of  the  trip  —  there  rose  on  the  west  rolling 
foothills  and  dark  peaked  profiles  against  the  sky  scarcely  to  be 
distinguished  from  gray  cloud  banks.  These  were  the  mountains ; 
and  the  real  hazards  of  free  trapping  began.  No  use  to  follow 
the  easiest  passes  to  the  most  frequented  valleys.  The  fur  com- 
pany brigades  marched  through  these,  sweeping  up  game  like  a 
forest  fire ;  so  the  free  trappers  sought  out  the  hidden,  inaccessible 
valleys,  going  where  neither  pack  horse  nor  canot  a  bee  d'esturgeon 
could  follow.  How  did  they  do  it."*  Very  much  the  way  Simon 
Fraser's  hunters  crawled  down  the  river-course  named  after  him. 
"Our  shoes,"  said  one  trapper,  "did  not  last  a  single  day." 

"We  had  to  plunge  our  daggers  into  the  ground,  .  .  .  other- 
wise we  would  slide  into  the  river,"  wrote  Fraser.  "We  cut  steps 
into  the  declivity,  fastened  a  line  to  the  front  of  the  canoe,  with 
which  some  of  the  men  ascended  in  order  to  haul  it  up.  .  .  .  Our 
lives  hung,  as  it  were,  upon  a  thread,  as  the  failure  of  the  line  or 
the  false  step  of  the  man  might  have  hurled  us  into  eternity.  .  .  . 
We  had  to  pass  where  no  human  being  should  venture.  .  .  .  Steps 
were  formed  like  a  ladder  on  the  shrouds  of  a  ship,  by  poles  hanging 


250  THE  FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

to  one  another  and  crossed  at  certain  distances  with  twigs,  the 
whole  suspended  from  the  top  to  the  foot  of  immense  precipices, 
and  fastened  at  both  extremities  to  stones  and  trees." 

He  speaks  of  the  worst  places  being  where  these  frail  swaying 
ladders  led  up  to  the  overhanging  ledge  of  a  shelving  precipice. 

Such  were  the  very  Veal  adventures  of  the  trapper's  life,  a  life 
whose  fascinations  lured  Johrl  Colter  from  civilization  to  the  wilds 
again  and  again  till  he  came  back  once  too  often  and  found  himself 
stripped,  helpless,  captive,  in  the  hands  of  the  Blackfeet. 

It  would  be  poor  sport  torturing  a  prisoner  who  showed  no 
more  fear  than  this  impassive  white  man  coolly  listening  and  wait- 
ing for  them  to  compass  his  death.  So  the  chief  dismissed  the 
suggestion  to  shoot  at  their  captive  as  a  target.  Suddenly  the 
Blackfoot  leader  turned  to  Colter.  "Could  the  white  man  run 
fast  ?"  he  asked.  In  a  flash  Colter  guessed  what  was  to  be  his  fate. 
He,  the  hunter,  was  to  be  hunted.  No,  he  cunningly  signalled, 
he  was  only  a  poor  runner. 

Bidding  his  warriors  stand  still,  the  chief  roughly  led  Colter 
out  three  hundred  yards.  Then  he  set  his  captive  free,  and  the 
exultant  shriek  of  the  running  warriors  told  what  manner  of  sport 
this  was  to  be.     It  was  a  race  for  life. 

The  white  man  shot  out  with  all  the  power  of  muscles  hard 
as  iron-wood  and  tense  as  a  bent  bow.  Fear  winged  the  man 
running  for  his  life  to  outrace  the  winged  arrows  coming  from  the 
shouting  warriors  three  hundred  yards  behind.  Before  him  stretched 
a  plain  six  miles  wide,  the  distance  he  had  so  thoughtlessly  paddled 
between  the  rampart  walls  of  the  caiion  but  a  few  hours  ago.  At 
the  Jefferson  was  a  thick  forest  growth  where  a  fugitive  might 
escape.     Somewhere  along  the  Jefferson  was  his  own  hidden  cabin. 

Across  this  plain  sped  Colter,  pursued  by  a  band  of  six  hundred 
shrieking  demons.  Not  one  breath  did  he  waste  looking  back 
over  his  shoulder  till  he  was  more  than  half-way  across  the  plain, 
and  could  tell  from  the  fading  uproar  that  he  was  outdistancing 


JOHN  COLTER  — FREE  TRAPPER  251 

his  hunters.  Perhaps  it  was  the  last  look  of  despair ;  but  it  spurred 
the  jaded  racer  to  redoubled  efforts.  All  the  Indians  had  been  left 
to  the  rear  but  one,  who  was  only  a  hundred  yards  behind. 

There  was,  then,  a  racing  chance  of  escape !  Colter  let  out 
in  a  burst  of  renewed  speed  that  brought  blood  gushing  over  his 
face,  while  the  cactus  spines  cut  his  naked  feet  like  knives.  The 
river  was  in  sight.  A  mile  more,  he  would  be  in  the  wood  1  But 
the  Indian  behind  was  gaining  at  every  step.  Another  backward 
look  !  The  savage  was  not  thirty  yards  away  !  He  had  poised  his 
spear  to  launch  it  in  Colter's  back,  when  the  white  man  turned, 
fagged  and  beaten,  threw  up  his  arms  and  stopped ! 

This  is  an  Indian  ruse  to  arrest  the  pursuit  of  a  wild  beast.  By 
force  of  habit  it  stopped  the  Indian  too,  and  disconcerted  him  so 
that  instead  of  launching  his  spear,  he  fell  flat  on  his  face,  breaking 
the  shaft  in  his  hand.  With  a  leap.  Colter  had  snatched  up  the 
broken  point  and  pinned  the  savage  through  the  body  to  the  earth. 

That  intercepted  the  foremost  of  the  other  warriors,  who  stopped 
to  rescue  their  brave  and  gave  Colter  time  to  reach  the  river. 

In  he  plunged,  fainting  and  dazed,  swimming  for  an  island  in 
mid-current  where  driftwood  had  formed  a  sheltered  raft.  Under 
this  he  dived,  coming  up  with  his  head  among  branches  of  trees. 

All  that  day  the  Blackfeet  searched  the  island  for  Colter,  running 
from  log  to  log  of  the  drift;  but  the  close-grown  brushwood  hid 
the  white  man.  At  night  he  swam  downstream  like  any  other 
hunted  animal  that  wants  to  throw  pursuers  off  the  trail,  went 
ashore  and  struck  across  country,  seven  days'  journey  for  the 
Missouri  Company's  fort  on  the  Bighorn  River. 

Naked  and  unarmed,  he  succeeded  in  reaching  the  distant  fur 
post,  having  subsisted  entirely  on  roots  and  berries. 

Chittenden  says  that  poor  Colter's  adventure  only  won  for 
him  in  St.  Louis  the  reputation  of  a  colossal  liar.  But  traditions 
of  his  escape  were  current  among  all  hunters  and  Indian  tribes  on 


252  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

the  Missouri,  so  that  when  Bradbury,  the  EngHsh  scientist,  went 
west  with  the  Astorians  in  1811,  he  sifted  the  matter,  accepted  it 
as  truth,  and  preserved  the  episode  for  history  in  a  small-type 
footnote  to  his  book  published  in  London  in  18 17. 

Two  other  adventures  are  on  record  similar  to  Colter's :  one 
of  Oskononton's  escape  by  diving  under  a  raft,  told  in  Ross's  Fur 
Hunters ;  the  other  of  a  poor  Indian  fleeing  up  the  Ottawa  from 
pursuing  Iroquois  of  the  Five  Nations  and  diving  under  the  broken 
bottom  of  an  old  beaver-dam,  told  in  the  original  Jesuit  Relations. 

And  yet  when  the  Astorians  went  up  the  Missouri  a  few  years 
later,  Colter  could  scarcely  resist  the  impulse  to  go  a  fourth  time 
to  the  wilds.  But  fascinations  stronger  than  the  wooings  of  the 
wilds  had  come  to  his  life  —  he  had  taken  to  himself  a  bride. 


CHAPTER  VI 
THE  GREATEST  FUR  COMPANY  OF  THE  WORLD 

In  the  history  of  the  world  only  one  corporate  company  has 
maintained  empire  over  an  area  as  large  as  Europe.  Only  one 
corporate  company  has  lived  up  to  its  constitution  for  nearly  three 
centuries.  Only  one  corporate  company's  sway  has  been  so  be- 
neficent that  its  profits  have  stood  in  exact  proportion  to  the  well- 
being  of  its  subjects.  Indeed,  few  armies  can  boast  a  rank  and 
file  of  men  who  never  once  retreated  in  three  hundred  years,  whose 
lives,  generation  after  generation,  were  one  long  bivouac  of  hard- 
ship, of  danger,  of  ambushed  death,  of  grim  purpose,  of  silent 
achievement. 

Such  was  the  company  of  "Adventurers  of  England  Trading 
into  Hudson's  Bay,"  as  the  charter  of  1670  designated  them.'- 
Such  is  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company  to-day  still  trading  with 
savages  In  the  white  wilderness  of  the  north  as  it  was  when  Charles 
II  granted  a  royal  charter  for  the  fur  trade  to  his  cousin  Prince 
Rupert. 

Governors  and  chief  factors  have  changed  with  the  changing 
centuries ;  but  the  character  of  the  company's  personnel  has  never 
changed.  Prince  Rupert,  the  first  governor,  was  succeeded  by  the 
Duke  of  York  (James  II) ;  and  the  royal  governor  by  a  long  line 
of  distinguished  public  men  down  to  Lord  Strathcona.  All  have 
been  men  of  noted  achievement,  often  in  touch  with  the  Crown, 

^  The  spelling  of  the  name  with  an  apostrophe  in  the  charter  seems  to  be  the  only  reason 
for  the  company's  name  always  having  the  apostrophe,  whereas  the  waters  are  now  known 
simply  as  Hudson  Bay. 

253 


254  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

always  with  that  passion  for  executive  and  mastery  of  difficulty 
which  exults  most  when  the  conflict  is  keenest. 

Pioneers  face  the  unknown  when  circumstances  push  them 
into  It.  Adventurers  rush  into  the  unknown  for  the  zest  of  con- 
quering it.  It  has  been  to  the  adventuring  class  that  fur  traders 
have  belonged. 

Radisson  and  Groseillers,  the  two  Frenchmen  who  first  brought 
back  word  of  the  great  wealth  in  furs  round  the  Far  Northern  sea, 
had  been  gentlemen  adventurers  —  "rascals,"  their  enemies  called 
them.  Prince  Rupert,  who  leagued  himself  with  the  Frenchmen 
to  obtain  a  charter  for  his  fur  trade,  had  been  an  adventurer  of 
the  high  seas  —  "pirate,"  we  would  say  —  long  before  he  became 
first  governor  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company.  And  the  Duke 
of  Marlborough,  the  company's  third  governor,  was  as  great  an 
adventurer  as  he  was  a  general. 

Latterly  the  word  "adventurer"  has  fallen  in  such  evil  repute, 
it  may  scarcely  be  applied  to  living  actors.  But  using  it  in  the 
old-time  sense  of  militant  hero,  what  cavalier  of  gold  braid  and 
spurs  could  be  more  of  an  adventurer  than  young  Donald  Smith 
who  traded  in  the  desolate  wastes  of  Labrador,  spending  seventeen 
years  in  the  hardest  field  of  the  fur  company,  tramping  on  snow- 
shoes  half  the  width  of  a  continent,  camping  where  night  overtook 
him  under  blanketing  of  snow-drifts,  who  rose  step  by  step  from 
trader  on  the  east  coast  to  commissioner  in  the  west  ?  And  this 
Donald  Smith  became  Lord  Strathcona,  the  governor  of  the 
Hudson's  Bay  Company. 

Men  bold  in  action  and  conservative  in  traditions  have  ruled 
the  company.  The  governor  resident  in  England  is  now  represented 
by  the  chief  commissioner,  who  in  turn  is  represented  at  each  of 
the  many  inland  forts  by  a  chief  factor  of  the  district.  Nominally, 
the  fur  trader's  northern  realm  is  governed  by  the  Parliament  of 
Canada.  Virtually,  the  chief  factor  rules  as  autocratically  as  he 
did  before  the  Canadian  Government  took  over  the  proprietary 
rights  of  the  fur  company. 


GREATEST   FUR  COMPANY  OF  THE  WORLD    255 

How  did  these  rulers  of  the  wilds,  these  princes  of  the  fur  trade, 
live  in  lonely  forts  and  mountain  fastnesses  ?  Visit  one  of  the 
northern  forts  as  it  exists  to-day. 

The  colder  the  climate,  the  finer  the  fur.  The  farther  north 
the  fort,  the  more  typical  It  is  of  the  fur  trader's  realm. 

For  six,  seven,  eight  months  of  the  year,  the  fur  trader's  world 
is  a  white  wilderness  of  snow;  snow  water-waved  by  winds  that 
sweep  from  the  Pole ;  snow  drifted  into  ramparts  round  the  fort 
stockades  till  the  highest  picket  sinks  beneath  the  white  flood  and 
the  corner  bastions  are  almost  submerged  and  the  entrance  to  the 
central  gate  resembles  the  cutting  of  a  railway  tunnel ;  snow  that 
billows  to  the  unbroken  reaches  of  the  circling  sky-line  like  a  white 
sea.  East,  frost-mist  hides  the  low  horizon  in  clouds  of  smoke, 
for  the  sun  which  rises  from  the  east  in  other  climes  rises  from  the 
south-east  here ;  and  until  the  spring  equinox,  bringing  summer 
with  a  flood-tide  of  thaw,  gray  darkness  hangs  in  the  east  like  a 
fog.  The  sun  moves  across  the  snowy  levels  in  a  wheel  of  fire,  for 
it  has  scarcely  risen  full  sphered  above  the  sky-line  before  It  sinks 
again,  etching  drift  and  tip  of  half-buried  brush  In  long  lonely  fading 
shadows.  The  west  shimmers  in  warm  purplish  grays,  for  the 
moist  Chinook  winds  come  over  the  mountains  melting  the  snow 
by  magic.  North,  is  the  cold  steel  of  ice  by  day;  and  at  night 
Northern  Lights  darting  through  the  polar  dark  like  burnished 
spears. 

Christmas  day  is  welcomed  at  the  northern  fur  post  by  a  firing 
of  cannon  from  the  snow-muffled  bastions.  Before  the  stars  have 
faded,  chapel  services  begin.  Frequently  on  either  Christmas  or 
New  Year's  day,  a  grand  feast  Is  given  the  tawny-skinned  habitues 
of  the  fort,  who  tome  shuffling  to  the  main  mess-room  with  no  other 
announcement  than  the  lifting  of  the  latch,  and  billet  themselves 
on  the  hospitality  of  a  host  that  has  never  turned  hungry  Indians 
from  Its  doors. 

For  reasons  well  known  to   the   woodcraftsman,  a   sudden   lull 
falls  on  winter  hunting  in  December,  and  all  the  trappers  within 


2S6  THE  FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

a  week's  journey  from  the  fort,  all  the  half-breed  guides  who  add 
to  the  instinct  of  native  craft  the  reasoning  of  the  white,  all  the 
Indian  hunters  ranging  river-course  and  mountain  have  come  by 
snow-shoes  and  dog  train  to  spend  festive  days  at  the  fort.  A 
great  jangling  of  bells  announces  the  huskies  (dog  trains)  scampering 
over  the  crusted  snow-drifts.  A  babel  of  barks  and  curses  follows, 
for  the  huskies  celebrate  their  arrival  by  tangling  themselves  up 
in  their  harness  and  enjoying  a  free  fight. 

Dogs  unharnessed,  in  troop  the  trappers  to  the  banquet-hall, 
flinging  packs  of  tightly  roped  peltries  down  promiscuously,  to  be 
sorted  next  day.  One  Indian  enters  just  as  he  has  left  the  hunting- 
field,  clad  from  head  to  heel  in  white  caribou  with  the  antlers  left 
on  the  capote  as  a  decoy.  His  squaw  has  togged  out  for  the  occasion 
in  a  comical  medley  of  brass  bracelets  and  finger-rings,  with  a 
bear's  claw  necklace  and  ermine  ruff  which  no  city  connoisseur 
could  possibly  mistake  for  rabbit.  If  a  daughter  yet  remain  un- 
appropriated she  will  display  the  gayest  attire  —  red  flannel  galore, 
red  shawl,  red  scarf,  with  perhaps  an  apron  of  white  fox  skin  and 
moccasins  garnished  In  colored  grasses.  The  braves  outdo  even 
a  vain  young  squaw.  Whole  fox,  mink  or  otter  skins  have  been 
braided  to  the  end  of  their  hair,  and  hang  down  In  two  plaits  to  the 
floor.  Whitest  of  buckskin  has  been  ornamented  with  brightest 
of  beads,  and  over  all  hangs  the  gaudiest  of  blankets,  it  may  be  a 
musk-ox-skin  with  the  feats  of  the  warrior  set  forth  in  rude  draw- 
ings on  the  smooth  side. 

Children  and  old  people,  too,  come  to  the  feast,  for  the  Indian's 
stomach  is  the  magnet  that  draws  his  soul.  Grotesque  little 
figures  the  children  are,  with  men's  trousers  shambling  past  their 
heels,  rabbit-skin  coats  with  the  fur  turned  In,  and  on  top  of  all 
some  old  stove-pipe  hat  or  discarded  busby  coming  half-way  down 
to  the  urchin's  neck.  The  old  people  have  more  resemblance  to 
parchment  on  gnarled  sticks  than  to  human  beings.  They  shiver 
under  dirty  blankets  with  every  sort  of  cast-oflF  rag  tied  about  their 
limbs,  hobbling  lame  from  frozen  feet  or  rheumatism,  mumbling 


GREATEST  FUR  COMPANY  OF  THE  WORLD    257 

toothless  requests  for  something  to  eat  or  something  to  wear, 
for  tobacco,  the  solace  of  Indian  woes,  or  what  is  next  best  —  tea. 

Among  so  many  guests  are  many  needs.  One  half-breed  from 
a  far  wintering  outpost,  where  perhaps  a  white  man  and  this  guide 
are  living  in  a  chinked  shack  awaiting  a  hunting  party's  return, 
arrives  at  the  fort  with  frozen  feet.  Little  Labree's  feet  must  be 
thawed  out,  and  sometimes  little  Labree  dies  under  the  process, 
leaving  as  a  legacy  to  the  chief  factor  the  death-bed  pledge  that  the 
corpse  be  taken  to  a  distant  tribal  burying-ground.  And  no 
matter  how  inclement  the  winter,  the  chief  factor  keeps  his  pledge, 
for  the  integrity  of  a  promise  is  the  only  law  in  the  fur  trader's 
realm.  Special  attentions,  too,  must  be  paid  those  old  retainers 
who  have  acted  as  mentors  of  the  fort  in  times  of  trouble. 

A  few  years  ago  it  would  not  have  been  safe  to  give  this  treat 
inside  of  fort  walls.  Rations  would  have  been  served  through  loop- 
holes and  the  feast  held  outside  the  gates;  but  so  faithfully  have 
the  Indians  become  bound  to  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company  there  are 
not  any  forts  in  the  fur  territory  where  Indians  must  be  excluded. 

Of  the  feast  little  need  be  said.  Like  the  camel,  the  Indian 
lays  up  store  for  the  morrow,  judging  from  his  capacity  for  weeks 
of  morrows.  His  benefactor  no  more  dines  with  him  than  a  planta- 
tion master  of  the  South  would  have  dined  with  feasting  slaves. 
Elsewhere  a  bell  calls  the  company  officers  to  breakfast  at  7.30,  dinner 
at  I,  supper  at  7.  Officers  dine  first,  white  hunters  and  trappers 
second,  that  difference  between  master  and  servant  being  main- 
tained which  is  part  of  the  company's  almost  military  discipline. 
In  the  large  forts  are  libraries,  whither  resort  the  officers  for  the 
long  winter  nights.     But  over  the  feast  wild  hilarity  reigns. 

A  French-Canadian  fiddler  strikes  up  a  tuneless  jig  that  sets 
the  Indians  pounding  the  floor  in  figureless  dances  with  moccasined 
heels  till  mid-day  glides  into  midnight  and  midnight  to  morning. 
I  remember  hearing  of  one  such  mid-day  feast  In  Red  River  settle- 
ment that  prolonged  itself  past  four  of  the  second  morning.  Against 
the  walls  sit  old  folks  spinning  yarns  of  the  past.     There  is  a  print 


258  THE  FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

of  Sir  George  Simpson  behind  one  raconteur^ s  head.  Ah !  yes, 
the  oldest  guides  all  remember  Sir  George,  though  half  a  century 
has  passed  since  his  day.  He  was  the  governor  who  travelled  with 
flags  flying  from  every  prow,  and  cannon  firing  when  he  left  the 
forts,  and  men  drawn  up  in  procession  like  soldiers  guarding  an  em- 
peror when  he  entered  the  fur  posts  with  coureurs  and  all  the  flourish 
of  royal  state.  Then  some  story-teller  recalls  how  he  has  heard 
the  old  guides  tell  of  the  imperious  governor  once  provoking  personal 
conflict  with  an  equally  imperious  steersman,  who  first  ducked 
the  governor  into  a  lake  they  were  traversing  and  then  ducked 
into  the  lake  himself  to  rescue  the  governor. 

And  there  is  a  crucifix  high  on  the  wall  left  by  Pere  Lacomb  the 
last  time  the  famous  missionary  to  the  red  men  of  the  Far  North 
passed  this  way;  and  every  Indian  calls  up  some  kindness  done, 
some  sacrifice  by  Father  Lacomb.  On  the  gun-rack  are  old  mus- 
kets and  Indian  masks  and  scalp-locks,  bringing  back  the  days 
when  Russian  traders  instigated  a  massacre  at  this  fort  and  when 
white  traders  flew  at  each  other's  throats  as  Nor'  Westers  struggled 
with  Hudson's  Bay  for  supremacy  in  the  fur  trade. 

"Ah,  oui,  those  white  men,  they  were  brave  fighters,  they  did 
not  know  how  to  stop.  Mais,  sacre,  they  were  fools,  those  white 
men,  after  all !  Instead  of  hiding  in  ambush  to  catch  the  foe,  those 
white  men  measured  off  paces,  stood  up  face  to  face  and  fired  blank 
—  oui  —  fired  blank  !  Ugh  !  Of  course,  one  fool  he  was  kill'  and 
the  other  fool,  most  like,  he  was  wound' !  Ugh,  by  Gar !  What 
Indian  would  have  so  little  sense .?"  ^ 

Of  hunting  tales,  the  Indian  store  is  exhaustless.  That  enor- 
mous bear-skin  stretched  to  four  pegs  on  the  wall  brings  up  Mon- 
tagnais,  the  Noseless  One,  who  still  lives  on  Peace  River  and  once 
slew  the  largest  bear  ever  killed  in  the  Rockies,  returning  to  this 
very  fort  with  one  hand  dragging  the  enormous  skin  and  the  other 
holding  the  place  which  his  nose  no  longer  graced. 

*  To  the  Indian  mind  the  hand-to-hand  duels  between  white  traders  were  incomprehen- 
sible pieces  of  folly. 


GREATEST  FUR  COMPANY  OF  THE  WORLD    259 

"Montagnais?  Ah,  bien,  messieurs!  Montagnais,  he  brave 
man  !  Venez  ici  —  bien  —  so  —  I  tole  you  'bout  heem,"  begins 
some  French-Canadian  trapper  with  a  strong  tinge  of  Indian  blood 
in  his  swarthy  skin.  "Bigosh!  He  brave  man!  I  tole  you 
'bout  dat  happen !  Montagnais,  he  go  stumble  t'rough  snow  — 
how  you  call  dat  ?  —  hill,  steep  —  steep  !  Qui,  by  Gar !  dat  vas 
steep  hill !  de  snow,  she  go  slide,  slide,  lak'  de  —  de  gran'  rapeed, 
see  ?"  emphasizing  the  snow-slide  with  illustrative  gesture.  "Bien, 
done !  Mais,  Montagnais,  he  stick  gun-stock  in  de  snow  stop 
heem  fall  —  so  —  see  ?  Tonnerre  !  Bigosh  !  for  sure  she  go  off 
wan  beeg  bang !  Sacre !  She  make  so  much  noise  she  wake  wan 
beeg  ol'  bear  sleep  in  snow.  Montagnais,  he  tumble  on  hees  back  ! 
Mais,  messieurs,  de  bear  —  diable !  'fore  Montagnais  wink  hees 
eye  de  bear  jump  on  top  lak'  wan  beeg  loup-garou  !  Montagnais, 
he  brave  man  —  he  not  scare  —  he  say  wan  leetle  prayer,  wan 
han'  he  cover  his  eyes !  Odder  han'  —  sacre  —  dat  grab  hees 
knife  out  hees  belt  —  sz-sz-sz,  messieurs.  For  sure  he  feel  her 
breat'  —  diable  !  —  for  sure  he  fin'  de  place  her  heart  beat  — 
Tonnerre !  Vite !  he  stick  dat  knife  in  straight  up  hees  wrist, 
into  de  heart  dat  bear !  Dat  bes'  t'ing  do  —  for  sure  de  leetle 
prayer  dat  tole  him  best  t'ing  do !  De  bear  she  roll  over  —  over 
—  dead's  wan  stone  —  c'est  vrai !  she  no  mor' jump  top  Montagnais  ! 
Bien,  ma  frien' !  Montagnais,  he  roll  over  too  —  leetle  bit  scare ! 
Mais,  hees  nose  !  Ah  !  bigosh  !  de  bear  she  got  dat ;  dat  all  nose 
he  ever  haf  no  mor' !     C'est  vrai,  messieurs,  bien  !" 

And  with  a  finishing  flourish  the  story-teller  takes  to  himself 
all  the  credit  of  Montagnais's  heroism. 

But  in  all  the  feasting,  trade  has  not  been  forgotten ;  and  as 
soon  as  the  Indians  recover  from  post-prandial  torpor  bartering 
begins.  In  one  of  the  warehouses  stands  a  trader.  An  Indian 
approaches  with  a  pack  of  peltries  weighing  from  eighty  to  a  hun- 
dred pounds.  Throwing  it  down,  he  spreads  out  the  contents. 
Of  otter  and  mink  and  pekan  there  will  be  plenty,  for  these  fish- 
eaters  are  most  easily  taken   before   midwinter   frost  ha§   frozeii 


26o  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

the  streams  solid.  In  recent  years  there  have  been  few  beaver- 
skins,  a  closed  season  of  several  years  giving  the  little  rodents  a 
chance  to  multiply.  By  treaty  the  Indian  may  hunt  all  creatures 
of  the  chase  as  long  as  "the  sun  rises  and  the  rivers  flow";  but 
the  fur  trader  can  enforce  a  closed  season  by  refusing  to  barter 
for  the  pelts.  Of  muskrat  skins,  hundreds  of  thousands  are  carried 
to  the  forts  every  season.  The  little  haycock  houses  of  musk- 
rats  offer  the  trapper  easy  prey  when  frost  freezes  the  sloughs, 
shutting  off  retreat  below,  and  heavy  snowfall  has  not  yet  hidden 
the  little  creatures'  winter  home. 

The  trading  is  done  in  several  ways.  Among  the  Eskimos, 
whose  arithmetical  powers  seldom  exceed  a  few  units,  the  trader 
holds  up  his  hand  with  one,  two,  three  fingers  raised,  signifying 
that  he  offers  for  the  skin  before  him  equivalents  in  value  to  one, 
two,  three  prime  beaver.  If  satisfied,  the  Indian  passes  over  the 
furs  and  the  trader  gives  flannel,  beads,  powder,  knives,  tea  or 
tobacco  to  the  value  of  the  beaver-skins  indicated  by  the  raised 
fingers.  If  the  Indian  demands  more,  hunter  and  trader  wrangle 
in  pantomime  till  compromise  is  effected. 

But  always  beaver-skin  is  the  unit  of  coin.  Beaver  are  the  Indian's 
dollars  and  cents,  his  shillings  and  pence,  his  tokens  of  currency. 

South  of  the  Arctics,  where  native  intelligence  is  of  higher 
grade,  the  beaver  values  are  represented  by  goose-quills,  small 
sticks,  bits  of  shell,  or,  most  common  of  all,  discs  of  lead,  tea- 
chests  melted  down,  stamped  on  one  side  with  the  company  arms, 
on  the  other  with  the  figures  i,  2,  -j,  i,  representing  so  much  value 
in  beaver. 

First  of  all,  then,  furs  in  the  pack  must  be  sorted,  silver  fox 
worth  many  hundred  dollars  separated  from  cross  fox  and  blue  and 
white  worth  more  each  year,  according  to  quality,  and  from  common 
red  fox  worth  less.  Twenty  years  ago  it  was  no  unusual  thing 
for  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company  to  send  to  England  yearly  10,000 
cross  fox-skins,  7000  blue,  100,000  red,  half  a  dozen  silver.  Few 
wolf-skins  are  in  the  trapper's  pack  unless  particularly  fine  sped- 


GREATEST  FUR  COMPANY  OF  THE  WORLD    261 

mens  of  brown  Arctic  and  white  Arctic.  Against  the  wolf,  the 
trapper  wages  war  as  against  a  pest  that  destroys  other  game,  and 
not  for  its  skin.  Next  to  muskrat  the  most  plentiful  fur  taken  by 
the  Indian,  though  not  highly  esteemed  by  the  trader,  will  be 
that  of  the  rabbit  or  varying  hare.  Buffalo  was  once  the  staple  of 
the  hunter.  What  the  buffalo  was  the  white  rabbit  is  to-day. 
From  it  the  Indian  gets  clothing,  tepee  covers,  blankets,  thongs, 
food.  From  it  the  white  man  who  is  a  manufacturer  of  furs  gets 
gray  fox  and  chinchilla  and  seal  in  imitation.  Except  one  year  in 
seven,  when  a  rabbit  plague  spares  the  land  by  cutting  down  their 
prolific  numbers,  the  varying  hare  is  plentiful  enough  to  sustain 
the  Indian. 

Having  received  so  many  bits  of  lead  for  his  furs,  the  Indian 
goes  to  the  store  counter  where  begins  interminable  dickering. 
Montagnais's  squaw  has  only  fifty  "beaver"  coin,  and  her  desires 
are  a  hundredfold  what  those  will  buy.  Besides,  the  copper- 
skinned  lady  enjoys  beating  down  prices  and  driving  a  bargain 
so  well  that  she  would  think  the  clerk  a  cheat  if  he  asked  a  fixed 
price  from  the  first.  She  expects  him  to  have  a  sliding  scale  of 
prices  for  his  goods  as  she  has  for  her  furs.  At  the  termination 
of  each  bargain,  so  many  coins  pass  across  the  counter.  Frequently 
an  Indian  presents  himself  at  the  counter  without  beaver  enough  to 
buy  necessaries.  What  then  f  I  doubt  if  in  all  the  years  of 
Hudson's  Bay  Company  rule  one  needy  Indian  has  ever  been  turned 
away.  The  trader  advances  what  the  Indian  needs  and  chalks 
up  so  many  "beaver"  against  the  trapper's  next  hunt. 

Long  ago,  when  rival  traders  strove  for  the  furs,  whiskey  played 
a  disgracefully  prominent  part  in  all  bartering,  the  drunk  Indian 
being  an  easier  victim  than  the  sober,  and  the  Indian  mad  with 
thirst  for  liquor  the  most  easily  cajoled  of  all.  But  to-day,  even 
with  competition,  whiskey  plays  no  part  whatever.  Whiskey  is 
in  the  fort,  so  is  pain  killer,  for  which  the  Indian  has  as  keen  an 
appetite,  both  for  the  exigencies  of  hazardous  life  in  an  unsparing 
climate  beyond  medical  aid;    but  the  first  thing  Hudson's  Bay 


262  THE  FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

traders  did  In  1885,  when  rebel  Indians  surrounded  the  Saskatche- 
wan forts,  was  to  split  the  casks  and  spill  all  alcohol.  The  second 
thing  was  to  bury  ammunition  —  showing  which  influence  they 
considered  the  more  dangerous. 

Ermine  is  at  its  best  when  the  cold  is  most  intense,  the  tawny 
weasel  coat  turning  from  fawn  to  yellow,  from  yellow  to  cream  and 
snow-white,  according  to  the  latitude  north  and  the  season.  Un- 
less it  is  the  pelt  of  the  baby  ermine,  soft  as  swan's  down,  tail-tip 
jet  as  onyx,  the  best  ermine  is  not  likely  to  be  in  a  pack  brought 
to  the  fort  as  early  as  Christmas. 

Fox,  lynx,  mink,  marten,  otter  and  bear,  the  trapper  can  take 
with  steel  traps  of  a  size  varying  with  the  game,  or  even  with  the 
clumsily  constructed  deadfall,  the  log  suspended  above  the  bait 
being  heavy  or  light,  according  to  the  hunter's  expectation  of 
large  or  small  intruder ;  but  the  ermine  with  fur  as  easily  damaged 
as  finest  gauze  must  be  handled  differently. 

Going  the  rounds  of  his  traps,  the  hunter  has  noted  curious  tiny 
tracks  like  the  dots  and  dashes  of  a  telegraphic  code.  Here  are 
little  prints  slurring  Into  one  another  in  a  dash ;  there,  a  dead  stop, 
where  the  quick-eared  stoat  has  paused  with  beady  eyes  alert  for 
snow-bird  or  rabbit.  Here,  again,  a  clear  blank  on  the  snow 
where  the  crafty  little  forager  has  dived  below  the  light  surface 
and  wriggled  forward  like  a  snake  to  dart  up  with  a  plunge  of 
fangs  into  the  heart-blood  of  the  unwary  snow-bunting.  From 
the  length  of  the  leaps,  the  trapper  judges  the  age  of  the  ermine ; 
fourteen  Inches  from  nose  to  tail-tip  means  a  full-grown  ermine 
with  hair  too  coarse  to  be  damaged  by  a  snare.  The  man  suspends 
the  noose  of  a  looped  twine  across  the  runway  from  a  twig  bent 
down  so  that  the  weight  of  the  ermine  on  the  string  sends  the  twig 
springing  back  with  a  jerk  that  lifts  the  ermine  off  the  ground, 
strangling  it  instantly.  Perhaps  on  one  side  of  the  twine  he  has 
left  bait  —  smeared  grease,  or  a  bit  of  meat. 

If  the  tracks  are  like  the  prints  of  a  baby's  fingers,  close  and 
small,  the  trapper  hopes  to  capture  a  pelt  fit  for  a  throne  cloak, 


GREATEST  FUR  COMPANY  OF  THE  WORLD    263 


the  skin  for  which  the  Louis  of  France  used  to  pay,  in  modern 
money,  from  a  hundred  dollars  to  a  hundred  and  fifty  dollars.  The 
full-grown  ermines  will  be  worth  only  some  few  "beaver"  at  the 
fort.  Perfect  fur  would  be  marred  by  the  twine  snare,  so  the 
trapper  devises  as  cunning  a  death  for  the  ermine  as  the  ermine 
devises  when  it  darts  up  through  the  snow  with  its  spear-teeth 
clutched  in  the  throat  of  a  poor  rabbit.  Smearing  his  hunting- 
knife  with  grease,  he  lays  it  across  the  track.  The  little  ermine 
comes  trotting  in  dots  and  dashes  and  gallops  and  dives  to  the  knife. 
It  smells  the  grease,  and  all  the  curiosity  which  has  been  teaching 
it  to  forage  for  food  since  it  was  born  urges  it  to  put  out  its  tongue 
and  taste.  That  greasy  smell  of  meat  it  knows;  but  that  frost- 
silvered  bit  of  steel  is  something  new.  The  knife  is  frosted  like 
ice.  Ice  the  ermine  has  licked,  so  he  licks  the  knife.  But  alas 
for  the  resemblance  between  ice  and  steel  !  Ice  turns  to  water 
under  the  warm  tongue ;  steel  turns  to  fire  that  blisters  and  holds 
the  foolish  little  stoat  by  his  inquisitive  tongue  a  hopeless  prisoner 
till  the  trapper  comes.  And  lest  marauding  wolverine  or  lynx 
should  come  first  and  gobble  up  priceless  ermine,  the  trapper  comes 
soon.     And  that  is  the  end  for  the  ermine. 

Before  settlers  invaded  the  valley  of  the  Saskatchewan  the 
furs  taken  at  a  leading  fort  would  amount  to : 


Bear  of  all  varieties  ....  400 

Ermine,  medium 200 

Blue  fox 4 

Red  fox 91 

Silver  fox 3 

Marten 2,000 

Muskrat 200,000 

Mink 8,000 

Otter 500 


Skunk 6 

Wolf 100 

Beaver S,ooo 

Pekan  (fisher) 50 

Cross  fox 30 

White  fox 400 

Lynx 400 

Wolverine 200 


The  value  of  these  furs  in  "beaver"  currency  varied  with  the 
fashions  of  the  civilized  world,  with  the  scarcity  or  plenty  of  the 
furs,  with  the  locality  of  the  fort.     Before  beaver  became  so  scarce, 


264  THE  FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

100  beaver  equalled  40  marten  or  10  otter  or  300  muskrat;  25 
beaver  equalled  500  rabbit;  i  beaver  equalled  2  white  fox;  and 
so  on  down  the  scale.  But  no  set  table  of  values  can  be  given 
other  than  the  prices  realized  at  the  annual  sale  of  Hudson's  Bay 
furs,  held  publicly  in  London. 

To  understand  the  values  of  these  furs  to  the  Indian,  "beaver" 
currency  must  be  compared  to  merchandise,  one  beaver  buying 
such  a  red  handkerchief  as  trappers  wear  around  their  brows  to 
notify  other  hunters  not  to  shoot;  one  beaver  buys  a  hunting- 
knife,  two  an  axe,  from  eight  to  twenty  a  gun  or  rifle,  according 
to  its  quality.  And  in  one  old  trading  list  I  found  —  vanity  of 
vanities  — "one  beaver  equals  looking-glass." 

Trading  over,  the  trappers  disperse  to  their  winter  hunting- 
grounds,  which  the  main  body  of  hunters  never  leaves  from  Octo- 
ber, when  they  go  on  the  fall  hunt,  to  June,  when  the  long 
straggling  brigades  of  canoes  and  keel  boats  and  pack  horses 
and  jolting  ox-carts  come  back  to  the  fort  with  the  harvest  of 
winter  furs. 

Signs  unnoted  by  the  denizens  of  city  serve  to  guide  the  trappers 
over  trackless  wastes  of  illimitable  snow.  A  whitish  haze  of  frost 
may  hide  the  sun,  or  continuous  snowfall  blur  every  landmark. 
What  heeds  the  trapper .''  The  slope  of  the  rolling  hills,  the  lie 
of  the  frozen  river-beds,  the  branches  of  underbrush  protruding 
through  billowed  drifts  are  hands  that  point  the  trapper's  compass. 
For  those  hunters  who  have  gone  westward  to  the  mountains, 
the  task  of  threading  pathless  forest  stillness  is  more  difficult.  At 
a  certain  altitude  in  the  mountains,  much  frequented  by  game 
because  undisturbed  by  storms,  snow  falls  —  falls  —  falls,  without 
ceasing,  heaping  the  pines  with  snow  mushrooms,  blotting  out  the 
sun,  cloaking  in  heavy  white  flakes  the  notched  bark  blazed  as  a 
trail,  transforming  the  rustling  green  forests  to  a  silent  spectral  world 
without  a  mark  to  direct  the  hunter.  Here  the  woodcraftsman's 
lore  comes  to  his  aid.  He  looks  to  the  snow-coned  tops  of  the 
pine  trees.     The  tops  of  pine  trees  lean  ever  so  slightly  towards 


GREATEST  FUR  COMPANY  OF  THE  WORLD    265 

the  rising  sun.  With  his  snow-shoes  he  digs  away  the  snow  at  the 
roots  of  trees  to  get  down  to  the  moss.  Moss  grows  from  the  roots 
of  trees  on  the  shady  side  —  that  is,  the  north.  And  simplest  of 
all,  demanding  only  that  a  wanderer  use  his  eyes  —  which  the 
white  man  seldom  does  —  the  limbs  of  the  northern  trees  are  most 
numerous  on  the  south.  The  trapper  may  be  waylaid  by  storms, 
or  starved  by  sudden  migration  of  game  from  the  grounds  to  which 
he  has  come,  or  run  to  earth  by  the  ravenous  timber-wolves  that  pur- 
sue the  dog  teams  for  leagues ;  but  the  trapper  with  Indian  blood 
in  his  veins  will  not  be  lost. 

One  imminent  danger  is  of  accident  beyond  aid.  A  young 
Indian  hunter  of  Moose  Factory  set  out  with  his  wife  and  two 
children  for  the  winter  hunting-grounds  in  the  forest  south  of  James 
Bay.  To  save  the  daily  allowance  of  a  fish  for  each  dog,  they  did 
not  take  the  dog  teams.  When  chopping,  the  hunter  injured 
his  leg.  The  wound  proved  stubborn.  Game  was  scarce,  and 
they  had  not  enough  food  to  remain  in  the  lodge.  Wrapping 
her  husband  in  robes  on  the  long  toboggan  sleigh,  the  squaw  placed 
the  younger  child  beside  him  and  with  the  other  began  tramp- 
ing through  the  forest  drawing  the  sleigh  behind.  The  drifts 
were  not  deep  enough  for  swift  snow-shoeing  over  under- 
brush, and  their  speed  was  not  half  so  speedy  as  the  hunger  that 
pursues  northern  hunters  like  the  Fenris  Wolf  of  Norse  myth. 
The  woman  sank  exhausted  on  the  snow  and  the  older  boy,  nerved 
with  fear,  pushed  on  to  Moose  Factory  for  help.  Guided  by  the 
boy  back  through  the  forests,  the  fort  people  found  the  hunter  dead 
In  the  sleigh,  the  mother  crouched  forward  unconscious  from  cold, 
stripped  of  the  clothing  which  she  had  wrapped  round  the  child 
taken  In  her  arms  to  warm  with  her  own  body.  The  child  was 
alive  and  well.  The  fur  traders  nursed  the  woman  back  to 
life,  though  she  looked  more  like  a  withered  creature  of  eighty 
than  a  woman  barely  In  her  twenties.  She  explained  with  a 
simple  unconsciousness  of  heroism  that  the  ground  had  been 
too    hard    for  her  to  bury  her  husband,   and  she  was   afraid   to 


266  THE  FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

leave  the  body  and  go  on  to  the  fort  lest  the  wolves  should  molest 
the  dead.^ 

The  arrival  of  the  mail  packet  is  one  of  the  most  welcome  breaks 
in  the  monotony  of  life  at  the  fur  post.  When  the  mail  comes, 
all  white  habitants  of  the  fort  take  a  week's  holidays  to  read  letters 
and  news  of  the  outside  world. 

Railways  run  from  Lake  Superior  to  the  Pacific;  but  off  the 
line  of  railways  mail  is  carried  as  of  old.  In  summer-time  over- 
land runners,  canoe,  and  company  steamers  bear  the  mail  to  the 
forts  of  Hudson  Bay,  of  the  Saskatchewan,  of  the  Rockies,  and 
the  MacKenzie.  In  winter,  scampering  huskies  with  a  running 
postman  winged  with  snow-shoes  dash  across  the  snowy  wastes 
through  silent  forests  to  the  lonely  forts  of  the  bay,  or  slide  over 
the  prairie  drifts  with  the  music  of  tinkling  bells  and  soft  crunch- 
crunch  of  sleigh  runners  through  the  snow  crust  to  the  leagueless 
world  of  the  Far  North. 

Forty  miles  a  day,  a  couch  of  spruce  boughs  where  the  racquets 
have  dug  a  hole  in  the  snow,  sleighs  placed  on  edge  as  a  windbreak, 
dogs  crouched  on  the  buffalo-robes  snarling  over  the  frozen  fish, 
deep  hayings  from  the  running  wolf-pack,  and  before  the  stars 
have  faded  from  the  frosty  sky,  the  mail-carrier  has  risen  and  is 
coasting  away  fast  as  the  huskies  can  gallop. 

Another  picturesque  feature  of  the  fur  trade  was  the  long  caravan 
of  ox-carts  that  used  to  screech  and  creek  and  jolt  over  the  rutted 
prairie  roads  between  Winnipeg  and  St.  Paul.  More  than  1500 
Hudson's  Bay  Company  carts  manned  by  500  traders  with  tawny 
spouses  and  black-eyed  Impish  children  squatted  on  top  of  the 
load,  left  Canada  for  St.  Paul  in  August  and  returned  in  October. 
Carts  were  made  without  a  rivet  of  iron.  Bent  wood  formed 
the  tires  of  the  two  wheels.  Hardwood  axles  told  their  woes  to  the 
world  in  the  scream  of  shrill  bagpipes.  Wooden  racks  took  the 
place  of  cart  box.     In  the  shafts  trod  a  staid  old  ox  guided  from 

^  It  need  hardly  be  explained  that  it  is  the  prairie  Indian  and  not  the  forest  Ojibway  who 
places  the  body  on  high  scaffolding  above  the  ground ;  hence  the  woman's  dilemma. 


GREATEST  FUR  COMPANY  OF  THE  WORLD    267 

the  horns  or  with  a  halter,  drawing  the  load  with  collar  instead 
of  a  yoke.  The  harness  was  of  skin  thongs.  In  place  of  the  ox 
sometimes  was  a  "shagganippy"  pony,  raw  and  unkempt,  which 
the  imps  lashed  without  mercy  or  the  slightest  inconvenience 
to  the  horse. 

A  red  flag  with  the  letters  H.  B.  C.  in  white  decorated  the  lead- 
ing cart.  During  the  Sioux  massacres  the  fur  caravans  were  un- 
molested, for  the  Indians  recognized  the  flags  and  wished  to  remain 
on  good  terms  with  the  fur  traders. 

Ox-carts  still  bring  furs  to  Hudson's  Bay  Company  posts,  and 
screech  over  the  corduroyed  swamps  of  the  MacKenzie;  but  the 
railway  has  replaced  the  caravan  as  a  carrier  of  freight. 

The  steamers  of  several  companies  now  ply  on  the  largest  of 
the  inland  rivers  with  long  lines  of  fur-laden  barges  in  tow ;  but  the 
canoe  brigades  still  bring  the  winter's  hunt  to  the  forts  in  spring. 
Five  to  eight  craft  make  a  brigade,  each  manned  by  eight  paddlers 
with  an  experienced  steersman,  who  is  usually  also  guide.  But 
the  one  ranking  first  in  importance  is  the  bowman,  whose  quick 
eye  must  detect  signs  of  nearing  rapids,  whose  steel-shod  pole  gives 
the  cue  to  the  other  paddlers  and  steers  the  craft  past  foamy  reefs. 
The  bowman  it  is  who  leaps  out  first  when  there  is  "tracking"  — 
pulling  the  craft  upstream  by  tow-line  —  who  stands  waist  high  in 
ice  water  steadying  the  rocking  bark  lest  a  sudden  swirl  spill  furs 
to  the  bottom,  who  hands  out  the  packs  to  the  others  when  the 
waters  are  too  turbulent  for  "tracking"  and  there  must  be  a  "porP- 
age"  and  who  leads  the  brigade  on  a  run  —  half  trot,  half  amble  — 
overland  to  the  calmer  currents.  "Pipes"  are  the  measure  of  a 
portage  —  that  is,  the  pipes  smoked  while  the  voyageurs  are  on  the 
run.  The  bowman  it  is  who  can  thread  a  network  of  water-ways 
by  day  or  dark,  past  rapids  or  whirlpools,  with  the  certainty  of  an 
arrow  to  the  mark.  On  all  long  trips  by  dog  train  or  canoe, 
pemmican  made  of  deer  meat  and  marrow  put  in  air-tight  bags 
was  the  standard  food.  The  pemmican  now  used  is  of  moose  or 
caribou  beef. 


268  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

The  only  way  to  get  an  accurate  idea  of  the  size  of  the  king- 
dom ruled  by  these  monarchs  of  the  lonely  wastes  is  by  com- 
parison. 

Take  a  map  of  North  America.  On  the  east  is  Labrador,  a 
peninsula  as  vast  as  Germany  and  Holland  and  Belgium  and  half 
of  France.  On  the  coast  and  across  the  unknown  interior  are  the 
magical  letters  H.  B.  C,  meaning  Hudson's  Bay  Company  fort 
(past  or  present),  a  little  whitewashed  square  with  eighteen-foot 
posts  planted  picket-wise  for  a  wall,  a  barracks-like  structure 
across  the  court-yard  with  a  high  lookout  of  some  sort  near  the 
gate.  Here  some  trader  with  wife  and  children  and  staff  of  Indian 
servants  has  held  his  own  against  savagery  and  desolating  loneli- 
ness.    In  one  of  these  forts  Lord  Strathcona  passed  his  youth. 

Once  more  to  the  map.  With  one  prong  of  a  compass  in  the 
centre  of  Hudson  Bay,  describe  a  circle.  The  northern  half  em- 
braces the  baffling  Arctics ;  but  on  the  line  of  the  southern  circum- 
ference like  beads  on  a  string  are  Churchill  high  on  the  left,  York 
below  in  black  capitals  as  befits  the  importance  of  the  great  fur 
emporium  of  the  bay,  Severn  and  Albany  and  Moose  and  Rupert 
and  Fort  George  round  the  south,  and  to  the  right,  larger  and  more 
strongly  built  forts  than  in  Labrador,  with  the  ruins  of  stone 
walls  at  Churchill  that  have  a  depth  of  fifteen  feet.  Six-pounders 
once  mounted  these  bastions.  The  remnants  of  galleries  for 
soldiery  run  round  the  inside  walls.  A  flag  floats  over  each  fort 
with  the  letters  H.  B.  C.^  Officers'  dwellings  occupy  the  centre 
of  the  court-yard.  Banked  against  the  walls  are  the  men's  quarters, 
fur  presses,  stables,  storerooms.  Always  there  is  a  chapel,  at  one 
fort  a  hospital,  at  others  the  relics  of  stoutly  built  old  powder 
magazines  made  to  withstand  the  siege  of  hand  grenades  tossed 
in  by  French  assailants  from  the  bay,  who  knew  that  the  loot  of  a 
fur  post  was  better  harvest  than  a  treasure  ship.  Elsewhere  two 
small  bastions  situated  diagonally  across  from  each  other  were 
sufficient  to  protect  the  fur  post  by  sending  a  raking  fire  along  the 

*  The  flag  was  hoisted  on  Sundays  to  notify  the  Indians  there  would  be  no  trade. 


GREATEST  FUR  COMPANY  OF  THE  WORLD    269 

walls ;  but  here  there  was  danger  of  the  French  fleet,  and  the  walls 
were  built  with  bastion  and  trench  and  rampart. 

Again  to  the  map.  Between  Hudson  Bay  and  the  Rocky 
Mountains  stretches  an  American  Siberia  —  the  Barren  Lands. 
Here,  too,  on  every  important  water-way,  Athabasca  and  the  Liard 
and  the  MacKenzie,  into  the  land  of  winter  night  and  midnight 
sun  extend  fur  trading  posts.  We  think  of  these  northern  streams 
as  ice-jammed,  sluggish  currents,  with  mean  log  villages  on  their 
banks.  The  fur  posts  of  the  sub-Arctics  are  not  imposing  with 
picket  fences  in  place  of  stockades,  for  no  French  foe  was  feared 
here.  But  the  MacKenzie  River  is  one  of  the  longest  in  the  world, 
with  two  tributaries  each  more  than  1000  miles  in  length.  It 
has  a  width  of  a  mile,  and  a  succession  or  rapids  that  rival  the  St. 
Lawrence,  and  palisaded  banks  higher  than  the  Hudson  River's, 
and  half  a  dozen  lakes  into  one  of  which  you  could  drop  two  New 
England  states  without  raising  a  sand  bar. 

The  map  again.  Between  the  prairie  and  the  Pacific  Ocean  is 
a  wilderness  of  peaks,  a  Switzerland  stretched  into  half  the  length  of 
a  continent.  Here,  too,  like  eagle  nests  in  rocky  fastnesses,  are  fur 
posts. 

Such  Is  the  realm  of  the  northern  fur  trade  to-day. 

Before  18 12  there  was  no  international  boundary  in  the  fur 
trade.  But  after  the  war  Congress  barred  out  Canadian  com- 
panies. The  next  curtailment  of  hunting-ground  came  in  1869- 
1870,  when  the  company  surrendered  proprietary  rights  to  the 
Canadian  Government,  retaining  only  the  right  to  trade  in  the 
vast  north  land.  The  formation  of  new  Canadian  provinces  took 
place  south  of  the  Churchill ;  but  north  the  traders  barter  pelts 
undisturbed  as  of  old.  Yearly  the  staffs  are  shifted  from  post  to 
post  as  the  fortunes  of  the  hunt  vary ;  but  the  principal  posts  not 
including  winter  quarters  for  a  special  hunt  have  probably  not 
exceeded  two  hundred  in  number,  nor  fallen  below  one  hundred 
for  the  last  century.  Of  these  the  greater  numbers  are  of  course 
in  the  Far  North.     When  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company  was  fighting 


270  THE  FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

rivals,  Nor'  Westers  from  Montreal,  Americans  from  St.  Louis,  it 
must  have  employed  as  traders,  packers,  coureurs,  canoe  men, 
hunters,  and  guides,  at  least  5000  men ;  for  its  rival  employed 
that  number,  and  "The  Old  Lady,"  as  the  enemy  called  it,  always 
held  her  own.  Over  this  wilderness  army  were  from  250  to  3<x> 
officers,  each  with  the  power  of  life  and  death  in  his  hands.  To 
the  honor  of  the  company,  be  it  said,  this  power  was  seldom 
abused.^  Occasionally  a  brutal  sea-captain  might  use  lash  and 
triangle  and  branding  along  the  northern  coast ;  but  officers  defence- 
less among  savage  hordes  must  of  necessity  have  lived  on  terms  of 
justice  with  their  men. 

The  Canadian  Government  now  exercises  judicial  functions ; 
but  where  less  than  700  mounted  police  patrol  a  territory  as  large 
as  Siberia,  the  traders'  factor  is  still  the  chief  representative  of  the 
law's  power.  Times  without  number  under  the  old  regime  has  a 
Hudson's  Bay  officer  set  out  alone  and  tracked  an  Indian  murderer 
to  hidden  fastness,  there  to  arrest  him  or  shoot  him  dead  on  the 
spot ;  because  if  murder  went  unpunished  that  mysterious  impulse 
to  kill  which  is  as  rife  In  the  savage  heart  as  in  the  wolf's  would 
work  its  havoc  unchecked. 

Just  as  surely  as  "the  sun  rises  and  the  rivers  flow"  the  savage 
knows  when  the  hunt  fails  he  will  receive  help  from  the  fur  trader. 
But  just  as  surely  he  knows  if  he  commits  any  crime  that  same 
unbending,  fearless  white  man  will  pursue  —  and  pursue  —  and 
pursue  guilt  to  the  death.  One  case  is  on  record  of  a  trader  thrash- 
ing an  Indian  within  an  inch  of  his  life  for  impudence  to  officers 
two  or  three  years  before.  Of  course,  the  vendetta  may  cut  both 
ways,  the  Indian  treasuring  vengeance  in  his  heart  till  he  can 
wreak  it.  That  is  an  added  reason  why  the  white  man's  justice 
must  be  unimpeachable.  "Pro  pflle  cutem^'*  says  the  motto  of 
the  company  arms.  Without  flippancy  it  might  be  said,  "An  eye 
for  an  eye  and  a  tooth  for  a  tooth,"  as  well  as  "A  skin  for  a  skin" 
—  which  explains  the  freedom  from  crime  among  northern  Indians. 

*  Governor  Norton  will,  of  course,  be  recalled  as  the  most  conspicuous  for  his  brutality. 


GREATEST  FUR  COMPANY  OF  THE  WORLD    271 

And  who  are  the  subjects  living  under  this  Mosaic  paternalism  ? 

Stunted  Eskimos  of  the  Far  North,  creatures  as  amphibious  as 
the  seals  whose  coats  they  wear,  with  the  lustreless  eyes  of  dwarfed 
intelligence  and  the  agility  of  seal  flippers  as  they  whisk  double- 
bladed  paddles  from  side  to  side  of  the  darting  kyacks ;  wander- 
ing Montagnais  from  the  domed  hills  of  Labrador,  lonely  and 
sad  and  silent  as  the  naked  desolation  of  their  rugged  land  ;  Ojibways 
soft-voiced  as  the  forest  glooms  in  that  vast  land  of  spruce  tangle 
north  of  the  Great  Lakes  ;  Crees  and  Sioux  from  the  plains,  cunning 
with  the  stealth  of  creatures  that  have  hunted  and  been  hunted 
on  the  shelterless  prairie ;  Blackfeet  and  Crows,  game  birds  of  the 
foothills  that  have  harried  all  other  tribes  for  tribute,  keen-eyed 
as  the  eagles  on  the  mountains  behind  them,  glorying  in  war  as 
the  finest  kind  of  hunting ;  mountain  tribes  —  Stonies,  Kootenais, 
Shoshonies  —  splendid  types  of  manhood  because  only  the  fittest 
can  survive  the  hardships  of  the  mountains  ;  coast  Indians,  Chinook 
and  Chilcoot  —  low  and  lazy  because  the  great  rivers  feed  them 
with  salmon  and  they  have  no  heed  to  work. 

Over  these  lawless  Arabs  of  the  New  World  wilderness  the 
Hudson's  Bay  Company  has  ruled  for  two  and  a  half  centuries 
with  smaller  loss  of  life  in  the  aggregate  than  the  railways  of  the 
United  States  cause  in  a  single  year. 

Hunters  have  been  lost  in  the  wilds.  White  trappers  have 
been  assassinated  by  Indians.  Forts  have  been  wiped  out  of 
existence.  Ten,  twenty,  thirty  traders  have  been  massacred  at 
different  times.  But,  then,  the  loss  of  life  on  railways  totals  up 
to  thousands  in  a  single  year. 

When  fighting  rivals  long  ago,  it  is  true  that  the  Hudson's  Bay 
Company  recognized  neither  human  nor  divine  law.  Grant  the 
charge  and  weigh  it  against  the  benefits  of  the  company's  rule. 
When  Hearne  visited  Chippewyans  two  centuries  ago  he  found  the 
Indians  in  a  state  uncontaminated  by  the  trader ;  and  that  state  will 
give  the  ordinary  reader  cold  shivers  of  horror  at  the  details  of 
massacre  and  degradation.     Every  visitor  since  had  reported  the 


272  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

same  tribe  Improved  in  standard  of  living  under  Hudson's  Bay 
rule.  Recently  a  well-known  Canadian  governor  making  an 
itinerary  of  the  territory  round  the  bay  found  the  Indians  such 
devout  Christians  that  they  put  his  white  retinue  to  shame.  Re- 
turning to  civilization,  the  governor  was  observed  attending  the 
services  of  his  own  denomination  with  a  greater  fury  than  was  his 
wont.  Asked  the  reason,  he  confided  to  a  club  friend  that  he  would 
be  blanked  if  he  could  allow  heathen  Indians  to  be  better  Christians 
than  he  was. 

Some  of  the  shiftless  Indians  may  be  hopelessly  in  debt  to  the 
company  for  advanced  provisions,  but  if  the  company  had  not 
made  these  advances  the  Indians  would  have  starved,  and  the 
debt  Is  never  exacted  by  seizure  of  the  hunt  that  should  go  to  feed 
a  family. 

Of  how  many  other  creditors  may  that  be  said  "^  Of  how  many 
companies  that  it  has  cared  for  the  sick,  sought  the  lost,  fed  the 
starving,  housed  the  homeless  .''  With  all  its  faults,  that  is  the 
record  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company.^ 

^  The  summer  of  1920  saw  many  of  the  abuses  of  the  old  fights  of  a  hundred  years  ago 
repeated.  This  was  owing  to  the  intrusion  of  drunken  gamblers  in  a  new  game  as  told  in 
Part  I.  Whiskey  played  the  usual  part.  Indians,  resisting  the  debauchery  of  whole  tribes, 
did  not  commit  murders;  for  the  mounted  police  arrest  murderers;  but  they  did  destroy 
caches;  so  the  returning  buyer  coming  back  on  his  trail  would  perish  of  starvation.  Fortu- 
nately, the  collapse  of  the  gamblers'  intrusion  on  the  fur  trade  has  driven  these  gentry  out, 
ruined.  Prices  on  poor  furs  collapsed.  The  bubble  of  "  busting  the  old  companies  "  has 
brought  its  own  punishment  in  no  sales  for  poor  furs;  and  the  banks  are  selling  seized  furs 
in  foreclosed  lien  mortgages. 


CHAPTER  VII 
KOOT  AND  THE  BOB-CAT 

Old  whaling  ships,  that  tumble  round  the  world  and  back 
again  from  coast  to  coast  over  strange  seas,*'' hardly  ever  suffer 
any  of  the  terrible  disasters  that  are  always  overtaking  the  proud 
men-of-war  and  swift  liners  equipped  with  all  that  science  can  do 
for  them  against  misfortune.  Ask  an  old  salt  why  this  is,  and 
he  will  probably  tell  you  that  he  feels  his  way  forward  or  else  that  he 
steers  by  the  same  chart  as  that  — •  jerking  his  thumb  sideways  from 
the  wheel  towards  some  sea  gull  careening  over  the  billows.  A 
something,  that  is  akin  to  the  instinct  of  wild  creatures  warning 
them  when  to  go  north  for  the  summer,  when  to  go  south  for  the 
winter,  when  to  scud  for  shelter  from  coming  storm,  guides  the 
old  whaler  across  chartless  seas. 

So  it  is  with  the  trapper.  He  may  be  caught  in  one  of  his 
great  steel  traps  and  perish  on  the  prairie.  He  may  run  short  of 
water  and  die  of  thirst  on  the  desert.  He  may  get  his  pack  horses 
tangled  up  in  a  valley  where  there  is  no  game  and  be  reduced  to  the 
alternative  of  destroying  what  will  carry  him  back  to  safety  or 
starving  with  a  horse  still  under  him,  before  he  can  get  over  the 
mountains  into  another  valley  —  but  the  true  trapper  will  literally 
never  lose  himself.  Lewis  and  Clark  rightly  merit  the  fame  of 
having  first  explored  the  Missouri-Columbia  route ;  but  years  be- 
fore the  Louisiana  Purchase,  free  trappers  were  already  on  the 
Columbia.  David  Thompson  of  the  North-west  Company  was  the 
first  Canadian  to  explore  the  lower  Columbia  ;  but  before  Thompson 
had   crossed   the  Rockies,   French   hunters   were  already  ranging 

273 


274  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

the  forests  of  the  Pacific  slope.  How  did  these  coasters  of  the 
wilds  guide  themselves  over  prairies  that  were  a  chartless  sea  and 
mountains  that  were  a  wilderness  ?  How  does  the  wavey  know 
where  to  find  the  rush-grown  inland  pools  ?  Who  tells  the  caribou 
mother  to  seek  refuge  on  islands  where  the  water  will  cut  off  the 
wolves  that  would  prey  on  her  young  ? 

Something,  which  may  be  the  result  of  generations  of  accumu- 
lated observation,  guides  the  wavey  and  the  caribou.  Something, 
which  may  be  the  result  of  unconscious  inference  from  a  lifetime 
of  observation,  guides  the  man.  In  the  animal  we  call  it  instinct, 
in  the  man,  reason ;  and  in  the  case  of  the  trapper  tracking  path- 
less wilds,  the  conscious  reason  of  the  man  seems  almost  merged 
in  the  automatic  instinct  of  the  brute.  It  is  not  sharp-sightedness  — • 
though  no  man  is  sharper  of  sight  than  the  trapper.  If  is  not  acute- 
ness  of  hearing  —  though  the  trapper  learns  to  listen  with  the 
noiseless  stealth  of  the  pencil-eared  lynx.  It  is  not  touch  —  in 
the  sense  of  tactile  contact  —  any  more  than  it  is  touch  that  tells 
a  suddenly  awakened  sleeper  of  an  unexpected  noiseless  presence 
in  a  dark  room.  It  is  something  deeper  than  the  tabulated  five 
senses,  a  sixth  sense  — '  a  sense  of  feel,  without  contact  —  a  sense 
on  which  the  whole  sensate  world  writes  its  record  as  on  a  palimpsest. 
This  palimpsest  is  the  trapper's  chart,  this  sense  oi  feel,  his  weapon 
against  the  instinct  of  the  brute.  What  part  it  plays  in  the  life  of 
every  ranger  of  the  wilds  can  best  be  illustrated  by  telling  how  Koot 
found  his  way  to  the  fur  post  after  the  rabbit-hunt. 

When  the  midwinter  lull  falls  on  the  hunt,  there  Is  little  use 
in  the  trapper  going  far  afield.  Moose  have  "yarded  up."  Bear 
have  "holed  up"  and  the  beaver  are  housed  till  dwindling  stores 
compel  them  to  come  out  from  their  snow-hidden  domes.  There 
are  no  longer  any  buffalo  for  the  trapper  to  hunt  during  the  lull ; 
but  what  buffalo  formerly  were  to  the  hunter,  rabbit  are  to-day. 
Shields  and  tepee  covers,  moccasins,  caps  and  coats,  thongs  and 
meat,  the  buffalo  used  to  supply.     These  are  now  supplied  by 


KOOT  AND  THE   BOB-CAT  275 

"wahboos  —  little  white  chap,"  which  is  the  Indian  name  for 
rabbit. 

And  there  is  no  midwinter  lull  for  "wahboos."  While  the 
"little  white  chap"  runs,  the  long-haired,  owlish-eyed  lynx  of  the 
northern  forest  runs  too.  So  do  all  the  lynx's  feline  cousins,  the 
big  yellowish  cougar  of  the  mountains  slouching  along  with  his 
head  down  and  his  tail  lashing  and  a  footstep  as  light  and  sinuous 
and  silent  as  the  motion  of  a  snake ;  the  short-haired  lucifee  gorg- 
ing himself  full  of  "little  white  chaps"  and  stretching  out  to  sleep  on 
a  limb  in  a  dapple  of  sunshine  and  shadow  so  much  like  the  lucifee's 
skin  not  even  a  wolf  would  detect  the  sleeper ;  the  bunchy  bob-cat 
bounding  and  skimming  over  the  snow  for  all  the  world  like  a  bounc- 
ing football  done  up  in  gray  fur  —  all  members  of  the  cat  tribe 
running  wherever  the  "little  white  chaps"  run. 

So  when  the  lull  fell  on  the  hunt  and  the  mink  trapping  was 
well  over  and  marten  had  not  yet  begun,  Koot  gathered  up  his 
traps,  and  getting  a  supply  of  provisions  at  the  fur  post,  crossed 
the  white  wastes  of  prairie  to  lonely  swamp  ground  where  dwarf 
alder  and  willow  and  cottonwood  and  poplar  and  pine  grew  in  a 
tangle.  A  few  old  logs  dovetailed  into  a  square  made  the  wall  of  a 
cabin.  Over  these  he  stretched  the  canvas  of  his  tepee  for  a  roof 
at  a  sharp  enough  angle  to  let  the  heavy  snowfall  slide  off  from 
its  own  weight.  Moss  chinked  up  the  logs.  Snow  banked  out 
the  wind.  Pine  boughs  made  the  floor,  two  logs  with  pine  boughs, 
a  bed.  An  odd-shaped  stump  served  as  chair  or  table ;  and  on 
the  logs  of  the  inner  walls  hung  wedge-shaped  slabs  of  cedar  to 
stretch  the  skins.  A  caribou  curtain  or  bear-skin  across  the  en- 
trance completed  Koot's  winter  quarters  for  the  rabbit  hunt. 

Koot's  genealogy  was  as  vague  as  that  of  all  old  trappers  hang- 
ing round  fur  posts.  Part  of  him  —  that  part  which  served  best 
when  he  was  on  the  hunting-field  —  was  Ojibway.  The  other 
part,  which  made  him  improvise  logs  into  chair  and  table  and  bed, 
was  white  man ;  and  that  served  him  best  when  he  came  to  bargain 
with  the  chief  factor  over  the  pelts.     At  the  fur  post  he  attended 


276  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

the  Catholic  mission.  On  the  hunting-field,  when  suddenly  menaced 
by  some  great  danger,  he  would  cry  out  in  the  Indian  tongue 
words  that  meant  "O  Great  Spirit !"  And  it  is  altogether  probable 
that  at  the  mission  and  on  the  hunting-field,  Koot  was  worship- 
ping the  same  Being.  When  he  swore  —  strange  commentary  on 
civilization  —  he  always  used  white  man's  oaths,  French  patois  or 
straight  English. 

Though  old  hermits  may  be  found  hunting  alone  through  the 
Rockies,  Idaho,  Washington,  and  Minnesota,  trappers  do  not 
usually  go  to  the  wilds  alone ;  but  there  was  so  little  danger  in 
rabbit-snaring  that  Koot  had  gone  out  accompanied  by  only  the 
mongrel  dog  that  had  drawn  his  provisions  from  the  fort  on  a  sort 
of  toboggan  sleigh. 

The  snow  is  a  white  page  on  which  the  wild  creatures  write 
their  daily  record  for  those  who  can  read.  All  over  the  white 
swamp  were  little  deep  tracks ;  here,  holes  as  if  the  runner  had 
sunk ;  there,  padded  marks  as  from  the  bound  —  bound  —  bound 
of  something  soft ;  then,  again,  where  the  thicket  was  like  a  hedge 
with  only  one  breach  through,  the  footprints  had  beaten  a  little  I 
hard  rut  walled  by  the  soft  snow.  Koot's  dog  might  have  detected 
a  motionless  form  under  the  thicket  of  spiny  shrubs,  a  form  that 
was  gray  almost  to  whiteness  and  scarcely  to  be  distinguished  from  J 
the  snowy  underbrush  but  for  the  blink  of  a  prism  light  —  the 
rabbit's  eye.  If  the  dog  did  catch  that  one  telltale  glimpse  of  an 
eye  which  a  cunning  rabbit  would  have  shut,  true  to  the  training 
of  his  trapper  master  he  would  give  no  sign  of  the  discovery  except 
perhaps  the  pricking  forward  of  both  ears.  Koot  himself  pre- 
served as  stolid  a  countenance  as  the  rabbit  playing  dead  or  simu- 
lating a  block  of  wood.  Where  the  footprints  ran  through  the 
breached  hedge,  Koot  stooped  down  and  planted  little  sticks  across 
the  runway  till  there  was  barely  room  for  a  weasel  to  pass.  Across 
the  open  he  suspended  a  looped  string  hung  from  a  twig  bent  so 
that  the  slightest  weight  In  the  loop  would  send  it  up  with  a  death 
jerk  for  anything  caught  in  the  tightening  twine. 


KOOT  AND  THE  BOB-CAT  277 

All  day  long,  Koot  goes  from  hedge  to  hedge,  from  runway  to 
runway,  choosing  always  the  places  where  natural  barriers  compel 
the  rabbit  to  take  this  path  and  no  other,  travelling  if  he  can  in  a 
circle  from  his  cabin  so  that  the  last  snare  set  will  bring  him  back 
with  many  a  zigzag  to  the  first  snare  made.  If  rabbits  were  plenti- 
ful —  as  they  always  were  in  the  fur  country  of  the  North  except 
during  one  year  in  seven  when  an  epidemic  spared  the  land  from  a 
rabbit  pest  —  Koot's  circuit  of  snares  would  run  for  miles  through 
the  swamp.  Traps  for  large  game  would  be  set  out  so  that  the 
circuit  would  require  only  a  day ;  but  where  rabbits  are  numerous, 
the  foragers  that  prey  —  wolf  and  wolverine  and  lynx  and  bob- 
cat—  will  be  numerous,  too;  and  the  trapper  will  not  set  out  more 
snares  than  he  can  visit  twice  a  day.  Noon  —  the  Indian's  hour 
of  the  short  shadow  —  is  the  best  time  for  the  first  visit,  nightfall, 
the  time  of  no  shadow  at  all,  for  the  second.  If  the  trapper  has  no 
wooden  door  to  his  cabin,  and  in  it  —  instead  of  caching  in  a  tree 
—  keeps  fish  or  bacon  that  may  attract  marauding  wolverine,  he  will 
very  probably  leave  his  dogs  on  guard  while  he  makes  the  round 
of  the  snares. 

Finding  tracks  about  the  shack  when  he  came  back  for  his 
noonday  meal,  Koot  shouted  sundry  instructions  Into  the  mongrel's 
ear,  emphasized  them  with  a  moccasin  kick,  picked  up  the  sack 
in  which  he  carried  bait,  twine,  and  traps,  and  set  out  in  the  even- 
ing to  make  the  round  of  his  snares,  unaccompanied  by  the  dog. 
Rabbit  after  rabbit  he  found,  gray  and  white,  hanging  stiff  and 
stark,  dead  from  their  own  weight,  strangled  in  the  twine  snares. 
Snares  were  set  anew,  the  game  strung  over  his  shoulder,  and  Koot 
was  walking  through  the  gray  gloaming  for  the  cabin  when  that 
strange  sense  oi  feel  told  him  that  he  was  being  followed.  What  was 
it  ?     Could  It  be  the  dog  ^.     He  whistled  —  he  called  It  by  name. 

In  all  the  world,  there  is  nothing  so  ghostly  silent,  so  deathly 
quiet  as  the  swamp  woods,  muffled  in  the  snow  of  midwinter,  just 
at  nightfall.  By  day,  the  grouse  may  utter  a  lonely  cluck-cluck, 
or  the  snow-buntings  chirrup  and  twitter  and  flutter  from  drift  to 


278  THE  FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

hedge-top,  or  the  saucy  jay  shriek  some  scolding  impudence.  A 
squirrel  may  chatter  out  his  noisy  protest  at  some  thief  for  approach- 
ing the  nuts  which  lie  cached  under  the  rotten  leaves  at  the  foot 
of  the  tree,  or  the  sun-warmth  may  set  the  melting  snow  shower- 
ing from  the  swan's-down  branches  with  a  patter  like  rain.  But 
at  nightfall  the  frost  has  stilled  the  drip  of  thaw.  Squirrel  and 
bird  are  wrapped  in  the  utter  quiet  of  a  gray  darkness.  And  the 
marauders  that  fill  midnight  with  sharp  bark,  shrill  trembling 
scream,  deep  baying  over  the  snow,  are  not  yet  abroad  in  the  woods. 
All  is  shadowless  —  stillness  —  a  quiet  that  is  audible. 

Koot  turned  sharply  and  whistled  and  called  his  dog.  There 
wasn't  a  sound.  Later  when  the  frost  began  to  tighten,  sap- 
frozen  twigs  would  snap.  The  ice  of  the  swamp,  frozen  like  rock, 
would  by-and-by  crackle  with  the  loud  echo  of  a  pistol-shot  — 
crackle  —  and  strike  —  and  break  as  if  artillery  were  firing  a  fusil- 
lade and  infantry  shooters  answering  sharp.  By-and-by,  moon 
and  stars  and  Northern  Lights  would  set  the  shadows  dancing ; 
and  the  wail  of  the  cougar  would  be  echoed  by  the  lifting  scream 
of  its  mate.  But  now,  was  not  a  sound,  not  a  motion,  not  a  shadow, 
only  the  noiseless  stillness,  the  shadowless  quiet,  and  the  feel,  the 
feel  of  something  back  where  the  darkness  was  gathering  like  a 
curtain  in  the  bush. 

It  might,  of  course,  be  only  a  silly  long-ears  loping  under  cover 
parallel  to  the  man,  looking  with  rabbit  curiosity  at  this  strange 
newcomer  to  the  swamp  home  of  the  animal  world.  Koot's  sense 
of  feel  told  him  that  it  wasn't  a  rabbit ;  but  he  tried  to  persuade 
himself  that  it  was,  the  way  a  timid  listener  persuades  herself  that 
creaking  floors  are  burglars.  Thinking  of  his  many  snares,  Koot 
smiled  and  walked  on.  Then  it  came  again,  that  feel  of  something 
coursing  behind  the  underbrush  in  the  gloom  of  the  gathering  dark- 
ness. Koot  stopped  short  —  and  listened  —  and  listened  — 
listened  to  a  snow-muffled  silence,  to  a  desolating  solitude  that 
pressed  in  on  the  lonely  hunter  like  the  waves  of  a  limitless  sea 
round  a  drowning  man. 


J 


KOOT  AND  THE   BOB-CAT  279 

The  sense  of  feel  that  is  akin  to  brute  instinct  gave  him  the  im- 
pression of  a  presence.  Reason  that  is  man's  told  him  what  it 
might  be  and  what  to  do.  Was  he  not  carrying  the  snared  rabbits 
over  his  shoulder  ^.  Some  hungry  flesh-eater,  more  blood-thirsty 
than  courageous,  was  still  hunting  him  for  the  food  on  his  back  and 
only  lacked  the  courage  to  attack.  Koot  drew  a  steel  trap  from 
his  bag.  He  did  not  wish  to  waste  a  rabbit-skin,  so  he  baited  the 
spring  with  a  piece  of  fat  bacon,  smeared  the  trap,  the  snow,  every- 
thing that  he  had  touched  with  a  rabbit-skin,  and  walked  home 
through  the  deepening  dark  to  the  little  log  cabin  where  a  sharp 
"  woof- woof "  of  welcome  awaited  him. 

That  night,  in  addition  to  the  skins  across  the  doorway,  Koot 
jammed  logs  athwart  —  "to  keep  the  cold  out,"  he  told  himself. 
Then  he  kindled  a  fire  on  the  rough  stone  hearth  built  at  one  end 
of  the  cabin  and  with  the  little  clay  pipe  beneath  his  teeth  sat  down 
on  the  stump  chair  to  broil  rabbit.  The  waste  of  the  rabbit  he  had 
placed  in  traps  outside  the  lodge.  Once  his  dog  sprang  alert  with 
pricked  ears.  Man  and  dog  heard  the  sniff  —  sniff  —  sniff  of 
some  creature  attracted  to  the  cabin  by  the  smell  of  broiling  meat, 
and  now  rummaging  at  its  own  risk  among  the  traps.  And  once 
when  Koot  was  stretched  out  on  a  bear-skin  before  the  fire  puffing 
at  his  pipe-stem,  drying  his  moccasins  and  listening  to  the  fusillade 
of  frost  rending  ice  and  earth,  a  long  low  piercing  wail  rose  and  fell 
and  died  away.  Instantly  from  the  forest  of  the  swamp  came  the 
answering  scream  —  a  lifting,  tumbling,  eldritch  shriek. 

"I  should  have  set  two  traps,"  says  Koot.  "They  are  out  in 
pairs." 

Black  is  the  flag  of  danger  to  the  rabbit  world.  The  antlered 
shadows  of  the  naked  poplar  or  the  tossing  arms  of  the  restless 
pines,  the  rabbit  knows  to  be  harmless  shadows  unless  their  dapple 
of  sun  and  shade  conceals  a  brindled  cat.  But  a  shadow  that  walks 
and  runs  means  to  the  rabbit  a  foe ;  so  the  wary  trapper  prefers  to 
visit  his  snares  at  the  hour  of  the  short  shadow. 


28o  THE  FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

It  did  not  surprise  the  trapper  after  he  had  heard  the  lifting 
wail  from  the  swamp  woods  the  night  before  that  the  bacon  in  the 
trap  lay  untouched.  The  still  hunter  that  had  crawled  through  the 
underbrush  lured  by  the  dead  rabbits  over  Koot's  shoulder  wanted 
rabbit,  not  bacon.  But  at  the  nearest  rabbit  snare,  where  a  poor 
dead  prisoner  had  been  torn  from  the  twine,  were  queer  padded 
prints  in  the  snow,  not  of  the  rabbit's  making.  Koot  stood  looking 
at  the  telltale  mark.  The  dog's  ears  were  all  aprlck.  So  was  Koot's 
sense  of  feel,  but  he  couldn't  make  this  thing  out.  There  was  no 
trail  of  approach  or  retreat.  The  padded  print  of  the  thief  was  in 
the  snow  as  if  the  animal  had  dropped  from  the  sky  and  gone  back 
to  the  sky. 

Koot  measured  off  ten  strides  from  the  rifled  snare  and  made  a 
complete  circuit  round  it.  The  rabbit  runway  cut  athwart  the 
snow  circle,  but  no  mark  like  that  shuffling  padded  print. 

"It  isn't  a  wolverine,  and  it  isn't  a  fisher,  and  it  isn't  a  coyote," 
Koot  told  himself. 

The  dog  emitted  stupid  little  sharp  barks,  looking  everywhere 
and  nowhere  as  if  he  felt  what  he  could  neither  see  nor  hear.  Koot 
measured  off  ten  strides  more  from  this  circuit  and  again  walked 
completely  round  the  snare.  Not  even  the  rabbit  runways  cut  this 
circle.  The  white  man  grows  indignant  when  baffled,  the  Indian 
superstitious.  The  part  that  was  white  man  in  Koot  sent  him  back 
to  the  scene  In  quick  jerky  steps  to  scatter  poisoned  rabbit  meat 
over  the  snow  and  set  a  trap  in  which  he  readily  sacrificed  a  full- 
grown  bunny.  The  part  that  was  Indian  set  a  world  of  old  memories 
echoing,  memories  that  were  as  much  Koot's  nature  as  the  swarth 
of  his  skin,  memories  that  Koot's  mother  and  his  mother's  ancestors 
held  of  the  fabulous  man-eating  wolf  called  the  loup-garou,  and  the 
great  white  beaver,  father  of  all  beavers  and  all  Indians,  that  glided 
through  the  swamp  mists  at  night  like  a  ghost,  and  the  monster  grizzly 
that  stalked  with  uncouth  gambols  through  the  dark  devouring  be- 
nighted hunters. 

This  time  when  the  mongrel  uttered  his  little  sharp  barkings 


KOOT  AND  THE  BOB-CAT  281 

that  said  plainly  as  a  dog  could  speak,  "Something's  somewhere! 
Be  careful  there  —  oh!  —  I'll  be  on  to  you  in  just  one  minute!" 
Koot  kicked  the  dog  hard  with  plain  anger;  and  his  anger  was  at 
himself  because  his  eyes  and  his  ears  failed  to  localize,  to  real- 
ize, to  visualize  what  those  little  pricks  and  shivers  tingling  down 
to  his  finger-tips  meant.  Then  the  civilized  man  came  upper- 
most in  Koot  and  he  marched  off  very  matter-of-fact  to  the  next 
snare. 

But  if  Root's  vision  had  been  as  acute  as  his  sense  oi  feel  and 
he  had  glanced  up  to  the  topmost  spreading  bough  of  a  pine  just 
above  the  snare,  he  might  have  detected  lying  in  a  dapple  of  sun 
a,nd  shade  something  with  large  owl  eyes,  something  whose  pencilled 
ear-tufts  caught  the  first  crisp  of  the  man's  moccasins  over  the  snow- 
crust.  Then  the  ear-tufts  were  laid  flat  back  against  a  furry  form 
hardly  differing  from  the  dapple  of  sun  and  shade.  The  big  owl 
eyes  closed  to  a  tiny  blinking  slit  that  let  out  never  a  ray  of  tell- 
tale light.  The  big  round  body  mottled  gray  and  white  like  the 
snowy  tree  widened  —  stretched  —  flattened  till  it  was  almost  a  part 
of  the  tossing  pine  bough.  Only  when  the  man  and  dog  below  the 
tree  had  passed  far  beyond  did  the  pencilled  ears  blink  forward 
and  the  owl  eyes  open  and  the  big  body  bunch  out  like  a  cat  with 
elevated  haunches  ready  to  spring. 

But  by-and-by  the  man's  snares  began  to  tell  on  the  rabbits. 
They  grew  scarce  and  timid.  And  the  thing  that  had  rifled  the 
rabbit  snares  grew  hunger-bold.  One  day  when  Koot  and  the 
dog  were  skimming  across  the  billowy  drifts,  something  black  far 
ahead  bounced  up,  caught  a  bunting  on  the  wing,  and  with  another 
bounce  disappeared  among  the  trees. 

Koot  said  one  word  —  "Cat !"  —  and  the  dog  was  off  full  cry. 

Ever  since  he  had  heard  that  wailing  call  from  the  swamp  woods, 
he  had  known  that  there  were  rival  hunters,  the  keenest  of  all  still 
hunters  among  the  rabbits.  Every  day  he  came  upon  the  trail 
of  their  ravages,  rifled  snares,  dead  squirrels,  torn  feathers,  even 
the  remains  of  a  fox  or  a  coon.     And  sometimes  he  could  tell  from 


282  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

the  printings  on  the  white  page  that  the  still  hunter  had  been 
hunted  full  cry  by  coyote  or  timber-wolf.  Against  these  wolfish 
foes  the  cat  had  one  sure  refuge  always  —  a  tree.  The  hungry 
coyote  might  try  to  starve  the  bob-cat  into  surrender;  but  just  as 
often,  the  lynx  could  starve  the  coyote  into  retreat ;  for  if  a  foolish 
rabbit  darted  past,  what  hungry  coyote  could  help  giving  chase  ? 
The  tree  had  even  defeated  both  dog  and  man  that  first  week  when 
Koot  could  not  find  the  cat.  But  a  dog  in  full  chase  could  follow 
the  trail  to  a  tree,  and  a  man  could  shoot  into  the  tree. 

As  the  rabbits  decreased,  Koot  set  out  many  traps  for  the  lynx 
now  reckless  with  hunger,  steel  traps  and  deadfalls  and  pits  and  log 
pens  with  a  live  grouse  clucking  inside.  The  midwinter  lull  was  a 
busy  season  for  Koot. 

Towards  March,  the  sun-glare  has  produced  a  crust  on  the  snow 
that  is  almost  like  glass.  For  Koot  on  his  snow-shoes  this  had  no 
danger;  but  for  the  mongrel  that  was  to  draw  the  pelts  back  to 
the  fort,  the  snow  crust  was  more  troublesome  than  glass.  Where 
the  crust  was  thick,  with  Koot  leading  the  way  snow-shoes  and  dog 
and  toboggan  glided  over  the  drifts  as  if  on  steel  runners.  But 
in  midday  the  crust  was  soft  and  the  dog  went  floundering  through  as 
if  on  thin  ice,  the  sharp  edge  cutting  his  feet.  Koot  tied  little  buck- 
skin sacks  round  the  dog's  feet  and  made  a  few  more  rounds  of  the 
swamp ;  but  the  crust  was  a  sign  that  warned  him  it  was  time  to 
prepare  for  the  marten-hunt.  To  leave  his  furs  at  the  fort,  he 
must  cross  the  prairie  while  it  was  yet  good  travelling  for  the  dog. 
Dismantling  the  little  cabin,  Koot  packed  the  pelts  on  the  toboggan, 
roped  all  tightly  so  there  could  be  no  spill  from  an  upset,  and  putting 
the  mongrel  in  the  traces,  led  the  way  for  the  fort  one  night  when  the 
snow-crust  was  hard  as  ice. 

The  moon  came  up  over  the  white  fields  in  a  great  silver  disc. 
Between  the  running  man  and  the  silver  moon  moved  black  skulking 
forms  —  the  foragers  on  their  night  hunt.  Sometimes  a  fox  loped 
over  a  drift,  or  a  coyote  rose  ghostly  from  the  snow,  or  timber- 


KOOT  AND  THE   BOB-CAT  283 

wolves  dashed  from  wooded  ravines  and  stopped  to  look  till  Koot 
fired  a  shot  that  sent  them  galloping. 

In  the  dark  that  precedes  daylight,  Koot  camped  beside  a  grove 
of  poplars  —  that  is,  he  fed  the  dog  a  fish,  whittled  chips  to  make  a 
fire  and  boil  some  tea  for  himself,  then  digging  a  hole  in  the  drift  with 
his  snow-shoe,  laid  the  sleigh  to  windward  and  cuddled  down  be- 
tween bear-skins  with  the  dog  across  his  feet. 

Daylight  came  in  a  blinding  glare  of  sunshine  and  white  snow. 
The  way  was  untrodden.  Koot  led  at  an  ambling  run,  followed 
by  the  dog  at  a  fast  trot,  so  that  the  trees  were  presently  left  far 
on  the  offing  and  the  runners  were  out  on  the  bare  white  prairie 
with  never  a  mark,  tree  or  shrub,  to  break  the  dazzling  reaches  of 
sunshine  and  snow  from  horizon  to  horizon.  A  man  who  is  breaking 
the  way  must  keep  his  eyes  on  the  ground ;  and  the  ground  was  so 
blindingly  bright  that  Koot  began  to  see  purple  and  yellow  and  red 
patches  dancing  wherever  he  looked  on  the  snow.  He  drew  his 
capote  over  his  face  to  shade  his  eyes ;  but  the  pace  and  the  sun 
grew  so  hot  that  he  was  soon  running  again  unprotected  from  the 
blistering  light. 

Towards  the  afternoon,  Koot  knew  that  something  had  gone 
wrong.  Some  distance  ahead,  he  saw  a  black  object  against  the 
snow.  On  the  unbroken  white,  it  looked  almost  as  big  as  a  barrel 
and  seemed  at  least  a  mile  away.  Lowering  his  eyes,  Koot  let  out 
a  spurt  of  speed,  and  the  next  thing  he  knew  he  had  tripped  his 
snow-shoe  and  tumbled.  Scrambling  up,  he  saw  that  a  stick  had 
caught  the  web  of  his  snow-shoe;  but  where  was  the  barrel  for 
which  he  had  been  steering  ?  There  wasn't  any  barrel  at  all  — 
the  barrel  was  this  black  stick  which  hadn't  been  fifty  yards  away. 
Koot  rubbed  his  eyes  and  noticed  that  black  and  red  and  purple 
patches  were  all  over  the  snow.  The  drifts  were  heaving  and 
racing  after  each  other  like  waves  on  an  angry  sea.  He  did  not  go 
much  farther  that  day ;  for  every  glint  of  snow  scorched  his  eyes 
like  a  hot  iron.  He  camped  at  the  first  bluff  and  made  a  poultice 
of  cold  tea  leaves  which  he  laid  across  his  blistered  face  for  the  night. 


284  THE  FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

Anyone  who  knows  the  tortures  of  snow-blindness  will  under- 
stand why  Koot  did  not  sleep  that  night.  It  was  a  long  night  to 
the  trapper,  such  a  very  long  night  that  the  sun  had  been  up  for 
two  hours  before  its  heat  burned  through  the  layers  of  his  capote 
into  his  eyes  and  roused  him  from  sheer  pain.  Then  he  sprang  up, 
put  up  an  ungauntleted  hand  and  knew  from  the  heat  of  the  sun  that 
it  was  broad  day.  But  when  he  took  the  bandage  off  his  eyes, 
all  he  saw  was  a  black  curtain  one  moment,  rockets  and  wheels  and 
dancing  patches  of  purple  fire  the  next. 

Koot  was  no  fool  to  become  panicky  and  feeble  from  sudden  peril. 
He  knew  that  he  was  snow-blind  on  a  pathless  prairie  at  least  two 
days  away  from  the  fort.  To  wait  until  the  snow-blindness  had 
healed  would  risk  the  few  provisions  that  he  had  and  perhaps  expose 
him  to  a  blizzard.  The  one  rule  of  the  trapper's  life  is  to  go  ahead, 
let  the  going  cost  what  it  may;  and  drawing  his  capote  over  his 
face,  Koot  went  on. 

The  heat  of  the  sun  told  him  the  directions ;  and  when  the  sun 
went  down,  the  crooning  west  wind,  bringing  thaw  and  snow-crust, 
was  his  compass.  And  when  the  wind  fell,  the  tufts  of  shrub- 
growth  sticking  through  the  snow  pointed  to  the  warm  south.  Now 
he  tied  himself  to  his  dog ;  and  when  he  camped  beside  trees  into 
which  he  had  gone  full  crash  before  he  knew  they  were  there,  he 
laid  his  gun  beside  the  dog  and  sleigh.  Going  out  the  full  length 
of  his  cord,  he  whittled  the  chips  for  his  fire  and  found  his  way  back 
by  the  cord. 

On  the  second  day  of  his  blindness,  no  sun  came  up ;  nor  could 
he  guide  himself  by  the  feel  of  the  air,  for  there  was  no  wind.  It  was 
one  of  the  dull,  dead,  gray  days  that  precede  storms.  How  would 
he  get  his  directions  to  set  out  ?  Memory  of  last  night's  travel 
might  only  lead  him  on  the  endless  circling  of  the  lost.  Koot  dug 
his  snow-shoe  to  the  base  of  a  tree,  found  moss,  felt  it  growing  on 
only  one  side  of  the  tree,  knew  that  side  must  be  the  shady  cold 
side,  and  so  took  his  bearings  from  what  he  thought  was  the 
north. 


KOOT  AND  THE   BOB-CAT  285 

Koot  said  the  only  time  that  he  knew  fear  was  on  the  evening  of 
the  last  day.  The  atmosphere  boded  storm.  The  fort  lay  in  a 
valley.  Somewhere  between  Koot  and  that  valley  ran  a  trail. 
What  if  he  had  crossed  the  trail  ?  What  if  the  storm  came  and 
wiped  out  the  trail  before  he  could  reach  the  fort .''  All  day,  whiskey- 
jack  and  snow-bunting  and  fox  scurried  from  his  presence ;  but  this 
night  in  the  dusk  when  he  felt  forward  on  his  hands  and  knees  for 
the  expected  trail,  the  wild  creatures  seemed  to  grow  bolder.  He 
imagined  that  he  felt  the  pursuers  closer  than  on  the  other  nights. 
And  then  the  fearful  thought  came  that  he  might  have  passed  the 
trail  unheeding.     Should  he  turn  back  ? 

Afraid  to  go  forward  or  back,  Koot  sank  on  the  ground,  un- 
hooded  his  face  and  tried  to  force  his  eyes  to  see.  The  pain  brought 
biting,  salty  tears.  It  was  quite  useless.  Either  the  night  was  very 
dark,  or  the  eyes  were  very  blind. 

And  then  white  man  or  Indian  —  who  shall  say  which  came 
uppermost  ?  —  Koot  cried  out  to  the  Great  Spirit.  In  mockery 
back  came  the  saucy  scold  of  a  jay. 

But  that  was  enough  for  Koot  —  It  was  prompt  answer  to  his 
prayer;  for  where  do  the  jays  quarrel  and  fight  and  flutter  but  on 
the  trail  ?  Running  eagerly  forward,  the  trapper  felt  the  ground. 
The  rutted  marks  of  a  "jumper"  sleigh  cut  the  hard  crust.  With 
a  shout,  Koot  headed  down  the  sloping  path  to  the  valley  where 
lay  the  fur  post,  the  low  hanging  smoke  of  whose  chimneys  his 
eager  nostrils  had  already  snifl'ed. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

OTHER  LITTLE  ANIMALS  BESIDES  WAHBOOS  THE  RABBIT— BEING 
AN  ACCOUNT  OF  MUSQUASH  THE  MUSKRAT,  SIKAK  THE 
SKUNK,  WENUSK  THE   BADGER,  AND  OTHERS 


Musquash  the  Muskrat 

Every  chapter  in  the  trapper's  life  is  not  a  "  stunt." 
There  are  the  uneventful  days  when  the  trapper  seems  to  do 
nothing  but  wander  aimlessly  through  the  woods  over  the  prairie 
along  the  margin  of  rush-grown  marshy  ravines  where  the  stagnant 
waters  lap  lazily  among  the  flags,  though  a  feathering  of  ice  begins 
to  rim  the  quiet  pools  early  in  autumn.  Unless  he  is  duck-shooting 
down  there  in  the  hidden  slough  where  is  a  great  "quack-quack" 
of  young  teals,  the  trapper  may  not  uncase  his  gun.  For  a  whole 
morning  he  lies  idly  in  the  sunlight  beside  some  river  where  a  round- 
ish black  head  occasionally  bobs  up  only  to  dive  under  when  it 
sees  the  man.  Or  else  he  sits  by  the  hour  still  as  a  statue  on  the 
mossy  log  of  a  swamp  where  a  long  wriggling-wriggling  trail 
marks  the  snaky  motion  of  some  creature  below  the  amber  depths. 
To  the  city  man  whose  days  are  regulated  by  clock-work  and 
electric  trams  with  the  ceaseless  iteration  of  gongs  and  "step  fast 
there!"  such  a  life  seems  the  type  of  utter  laziness.  But  the  best- 
learned  lessons  are  those  imbibed  unconsciously  and  the  keenest 
pleasures  come  unsought.  Perhaps  when  the  great  profit-and-loss 
account  of  the  hereafter  is  cast  up,  the  trapper  may  be  found  to 
have  a  greater  sum  total  of  happiness,  of  usefulness,  of  real  knowl- 
edge than  the  multi-millionaire  whose  life  was  one  buzzing  round 
of  drive  and  worry  and  grind.  Usually  the  busy  city  man  has 
spent  nine  or  ten  of  the  most  precious  years  of  his  youth  in  study 

286 


OTHER  LITTLE  ANIMALS  287 

and  travel  to  learn  other  men's  thoughts  for  his  own  life's  work. 
The  trapper  spends  an  idle  month  or  two  of  each  year  wandering 
through  a  wild  world  learning  the  technic  of  his  craft  at  first  hand. 
And  the  trapper's  learning  is  all  done  leisurely,  calmly,  without 
bluster  or  drive,  just  as  nature  herself  carries  on  the  work  of  her 
realm. 

On  one  of  these  idle  days  when  the  trapper  seems  to  be  slouching 
so  lazily  over  the  prairie  comes  a  whiff  of  dank  growth  on  the  crisp 
autumn  air.  Like  all  wild  creatures  travelling  up-wind,  the  trapper 
at  once  heads  a  windward  course.  It  comes  again,  just  a  whiff  as 
if  the  light  green  musk-plant  were  growing  somewhere  on  a  dank 
bank.  But  ravines  are  not  dank  in  the  clear  fall  days ;  and  by 
October  the  musk-plant  has  wilted  dry.  This  is  a  fresh  living 
odor  with  all  the  difference  between  it  and  dead  leaves  that  there 
is  between  June  roses  and  the  dried  dust  of  a  rose  jar.  The  wind 
falls.  He  may  not  catch  the  faintest  odor  of  swamp  growth 
again,  but  he  knows  there  must  be  stagnant  water  somewhere  in 
these  prairie  ravines ;  and  a  sense  that  is  part  feel,  part  intuition, 
part  inference  from  what  the  wind  told  of  the  marsh  smell,  leads  his 
footsteps  down  the  browned  hillside  to  the  soggy  bottom  of  a  slough. 

A  covey  of  teals  —  very  young,  or  they  would  not  be  so  bold 
—  flackers  up,  wings  about  with  a  clatter,  then  settles  again  a 
space  farther  ahead  when  the  ducks  see  that  the  intruder  remains  so 
still.  The  man  parts  the  flags,  sits  down  on  a  log  motionless  as 
the  log  itself  —  and  watches !  Something  else  had  taken  alarm 
from  the  crunch  of  the  hunter's  moccasins  through  the  dry  reeds ; 
for  a  slimy  trail  is  there,  showing  where  a  creature  has  dived  below 
and  is  running  among  the  wet  under-tangle.  Not  far  off  on  another 
log  deep  in  the  shade  of  the  highest  flags  solemnly  perches  a  small 
prairie-owl.  It  is  almost  the  russet  shade  of  the  dead  log.  It 
hunches  up  and  blinks  stupidly  at  all  this  noise  in  the  swamp. 

"Oho,"  thinks  the  trapper,  "so  I've  disturbed  a  still  hunt," 
and  he  sits  if  anything  stiller  than  ever,  only  stooping  to  lay  his 
gun  down  and  pick  up  a  stone. 


288  THE  FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

At  first  there  is  nothing  but  the  quacking  of  the  ducks  at  the 
far  end  of  the  swamp.  A  lapping  of  the  water  against  the  brittle 
flags  and  a  water-snake  has  splashed  away  to  some  dark  haunt. 
The  whiskey-jack  calls  out  officious  note  from  a  topmost  bough,  as 
much  as  to  say:   "It's  all  right!     Me  —  me!  —  I'm  always  there! 

—  I've  investigated  !  —  it's  all  right !  —  he's  quite  harmless  ! "  And 
away  goes  the  jay  on  business  of  state  among  the  gopher  mounds. 

Then  the  interrupted  activity  of  the  swamp  is  resumed,  scold- 
ing mother  ducks  reading  the  riot  act  to  young  teals,  old  geese 
coming  craning  and  craning  their  long  necks  to  drink  at  the  water's 
edge,  lizards  and  water-snakes  splashing  down  the  banks,  midgets 
and  gnats  sunning  themselves  in  clouds  during  the  warmth  of  the 
short  autumn  days,  with  a  feel  in  the  air  as  of  crisp  ripeness,  drying 
fruit,  the  harvest-home  of  the  year.  In  all  the  prairie  region  north 
and  west  of  Minnesota  —  the  Indian  land  of  "sky-colored  water" 

—  the  sloughs  lie  on  the  prairie  under  a  crystal  sky  that  turns  pools 
to  silver.  On  this  almost  motionless  surface  are  mirrored  as  if 
by  an  etcher's  needle  the  sky  above,  feathered  wind  clouds,  flag 
stems,  surrounding  cliflFs,  even  the  flight  of  birds  on  wing.  As  the 
mountains  stand  for  majesty,  the  prairies  for  infinity,  so  the  marsh 
lands  are  types  of  repose. 

But  it  is  not  a  lifeless  repose.  Barely  has  the  trapper  settled 
himself  when  a  little  sharp  black  nose  pokes  up  through  the  water 
at  the  fore  end  of  the  wriggling  trail.  A  round  rat-shaped  head 
follows  this  twitching  proboscis.  Then  a  brownish  earth-colored 
body  swims  with  a  wriggling  sidelong  movement  for  the  log,  where 
roosts  the  blinking  owlet.  A  little  noiseless  leap  !  and  a  dripping 
muskrat  with  long  flat  tail  and  webbed  feet  scrabbles  up  the  moss- 
covered  tree  towards  the  stupid  bird.  Another  moment,  and  the 
owl  would  have  toppled  into  the  water  with  a  pair  of  sharp  teeth 
clutched  to  its  throat.     Then  the  man  shies  a  well-aimed  stone  ! 

Splash  !  Flop !  The  owl  is  flapping  blindly  through  the  flags 
to  another  hiding-place,  while  the  wriggle-wriggle  of  the  waters 
tells  where  the   marsh-rat   has   darted    away   under   the   tangled 


OTHER  LITTLE  ANIMALS  289 

growth.  From  other  idle  days  like  these,  the  trapper  has  learned 
that  muskrats  are  not  solitary  but  always  to  be  found  in  colonies. 
Now  if  the  muskrat  were  as  wise  as  the  beaver  to  whom  the  Indians 
say  he  is  closely  akin,  that  alarmed  marauder  would  carry  the  news 
of  the  man-intruder  to  the  whole  swamp.  Perhaps  if  the  others 
remembered  from  the  prod  of  a  spear  or  the  flash  of  a  gun  what 
man's  coming  meant,  that  news  would  cause  terrified  flight  of 
every  muskrat  from  the  marsh.  But  musquash  —  little  beaver, 
as  the  Indians  call  him  —  is  not  so  wise,  not  so  timid,  not  so  easily 
frightened  from  his  home  as  amisk,^  the  beaver.  In  fact,  nature's 
provision  for  the  muskrat's  protection  seems  to  have  emboldened 
the  little  rodent  almost  to  the  point  of  stupidity.  His  skin  is  of 
that  burnt  umber  shade  hardly  to  be  distinguished  from  the  earth. 
At  one  moment  his  sharp  nose  cuts  the  water,  at  the  next  he  is  com- 
pletely hidden  in  the  soft  clay  of  the  under-tangle ;  and  while  you 
are  straining  for  a  sight  of  him  through  the  pool,  he  has  scurried 
across  a  mud  bank  to  his  burrow. 

Hunt  him  as  they  may,  men  and  boys  and  ragged  squaws 
wading  through  swamps  knee-high,  yet  after  a  century  of  hunting 
from  the  Chesapeake  and  the  Hackensack  to  the  swamps  of  "sky- 
colored  water"  on  the  far  prairie,  little  musquash  still  yields 
7,000,000  pelts  a  year  with  never  a  sign  of  diminishing.  A  hun- 
dred years  ago,  in  1788,  so  little  was  muskrat  held  in  esteem  as  a 
fur,  the  great  North-west  Company  of  Canada  sent  out  only  17,000 
or  20,000  skins  a  year.  So  rapidly  did  muskrat  grow  in  favor  as 
a  lining  and  imitation  fur  that  in  1888  it  was  no  unusual  thing  for 
200,000  muskrat-skins  to  be  brought  to  a  single  Hudson's  Bay 
Company  fort.  In  Canada  the  climate  compels  the  use  of  heavier 
furs  than  in  the  United  States,  so  that  the  all-fur  coat  is  in  greater 

^  Amisk,  the  Chippewyan,  umisk,  the  Cree,  with  much  the  same  sound.  A  well-known 
trader  told  the  writer  that  he  considered  the  variation  in  Indian  language  more  a  matter  of 
dialect  than  difference  in  meaning,  and  that  while  he  could  speak  only  Ojibway  he  never  had 
any  difficulty  in  understanding  and  being  understood  by  Cree,  Chippewyan,  and  Assiniboine. 
For  instance,  rabbit,  "the  little  white  chap,"  is  toahboos  on  the  Upper  Ottawa,  wapus  on  the 
Saskatchewan,  wapauce  on  the  MacKenzie. 


290  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

demand  than  the  fur-lined ;  but  in  Canada,  not  less  than  2,000,000 
muskrat  furs  are  taken  every  year.  In  the  United  States  the  total 
is  close  on  4,000,000.  In  one  city  alone,  in  Brooklyn,  4  million  musk- 
rat-skins  are  cured  every  year.  A  single  stretch  of  good  marsh 
ground  has  yielded  that  number  of  skins  year  after  year  without  a 
sign  of  the  hunt  telling  on  the  prolific  little  musquash. 

What  is  the  secret  of  the  muskrat's  survival  while  the  strong 
creatures  of  the  chase  like  buffalo  and  timber-wolf  have  been  almost 
exterminated .?  In  the  first  place,  settlers  can't  farm  swamps ; 
so  the  muskrat  thrives  just  as  well  in  the  swamps  of  New  Jersey 
to-day  as  when  the  first  white  hunter  set  foot  in  America.  Then 
musquash  lives  as  heartily  on  owls  and  frogs  and  snakes  as  on  water 
mussels  and  lily-pads.  If  one  sort  of  food  fails,  the  muskrat  has 
as  omnivorous  powers  of  digestion  as  the  bear  and  changes  his  diet. 
Then  he  can  hide  as  well  in  water  as  on  land.  And  most  important 
of  all,  muskrat's  family  is  as  numerous  as  a  cat's,  five  to  nine  rats 
in  a  litter,  and  two  or  three  litters  a  year.  These  are  the  points 
that  make  for  little  musquash's  continuance  in  spite  of  all  that 
shot  and  trap  can  do. 

Having  discovered  what  the  dank  whiff,  half  animal,  half  vege- 
table, signified,  the  trapper  sets  about  (finding  the  colony.  He 
knows  there  is  no  risk  of  the  little  still  hunter  carrying  alarm  to 
the  other  muskrats.  If  he  waits,  it  is  altogether  probable  that 
the  fleeing  muskrat  will  come  up  and  swim  straight  for  the  colony. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  muskrat  may  have  scurried  overland 
through  the  rushes.  Besides,  the  trapper  observed  tracks,  'tiny 
leaf-like  tracks  as  of  little  webbed  feet,  over  the  soft  clay  of  the 
marsh  bank.  These  will  lead  to  the  colony,  so  the  trapper  rises 
and  parting  the  rushes  not  too  noisily,  follows  the  little  footprint 
along  the  margin  of  the  swamp. 

Here  the  track  is  lost  at  the  narrow  ford  of  an  inflowing  stream, 
but  across  the  creek  lies  a  fallen  poplar  littered  with  —  what  ? 
The  feathers  and  bones  of  a  dead  owlet.  Balancing  himself  —  how 
much  better  the  moccasins  cling  than  boots !  —  the  trapper  crosses 


OTHER  LITTLE  ANIMALS  291 

the  log  and  takes  up  the  trail  through  the  rushes.  But  here  mus- 
quash has  dived  off  into  the  water  for  the  express  purpose  of  throw- 
ing a  possible  pursuer  off  the  scent.  But  the  tracks  betrayed  which 
way  musquash  was  travelling ;  so  the  trapper  goes  on,  knowing  if 
he  does  not  find  the  little  haycock  houses  on  this  side,  he  can  cross 
to  the  other. 

Presently,  he  almost  stumbles  over  what  sent  the  muskrat 
diving  just  at  this  place.  It  is  the  wreck  of  a  wolverine's  ravage 
—  a  little  wattled  dome-shaped  house  exposed  to  that  arch-destroyer 
by  the  shrinking  of  the  swamp.  So  shallow  has  the  water  become, 
that  a  wolverine  has  easily  waded  and  leaped  clear  across  to  the 
roof  of  the  muskrat's  house.  A  beaver-dam  two  feet  thick  cannot 
resist  the  onslaught  of  the  wolverine's  claws ;  how  much  less  will 
this  round  nest  of  reeds  and  grass  and  mosses  cemented  together 
with  soft  clay  !  The  roof  has  been  torn  from  the  domed  house, 
leaving  the  inside  bare  and  showing  plainly  the  domestic  economy 
of  the  muskrat  home,  smooth  round  walls  inside,  a  floor  or  gallery 
of  sticks  and  grasses,  where  the  family  had  lived  in  an  air  chamber 
above  the  water,  rough  walls  below  the  water-line  and  two  or 
three  little  openings  that  must  have  been  safely  under  water  before 
the  swamp  receded.  Perhaps  a  mussel  or  lily  bulb  has  been  left 
in  the  deserted  larder.  From  the  oozy  slime  below  the  mid-floor 
to  the  topmost  wall  will  not  measure  more  than  two  or  three  feet. 
If  the  swamp  had  not  dried  here,  the  stupid  little  muskrats  that 
escaped  the  ravager's  claws  would  probably  have  come  back  to 
the  wrecked  house,  built  up  the  torn  roof,  and  gone  on  living  in 
danger  till  another  wolverine  came.  But  a  water  doorway  the 
muskrat  must  have.  That  he  has  learned  by  countless  assaults 
on  his  house-top,  so  when  the  marsh  retreated  the  muskrats  aban- 
doned their  house. 

All  about  the  deserted  house  are  runways,  tiny  channels  across 
oozy  peninsulas  and  islands  of  the  muskrat's  diminutive  world 
such  as  a  very  small  beaver  might  make.  The  trapper  jumps 
across  to  a  dry  patch  or  mound  in  the  midst  of  the  slimy  bottom  and 


292  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

prods  an  earth  bank  with  a  stick.  It  is  as  he  thought  —  hollow ; 
a  muskrat  burrow  or  gallery  in  the  clay  wall  where  the  refugees 
from  this  house  had  scuttled  from  the  wolverine.  But  now  all  is 
deserted.  The  water  has  shrunk  —  that  was  the  danger  signal 
to  the  muskrat;  and  there  had  been  a  grand  moving  to  a  deeper 
part  of  the  swamp.  Perhaps,  after  all,  this  is  a  very  old  house 
not  used  since  last  winter. 

Going  back  to  the  bank,  the  trapper  skirts  through  the  crush 
of  brittle  rushes  round  the  swamp.  Coming  sharply  on  deeper 
water,  a  dank,  stagnant  bayou,  heavy  with  the  smell  of  furry  life, 
the  trapper  pushes  aside  the  flags,  peers  out  and  sees  what  resembles 
a  prairie-dog  town  on  water  —  such  a  number  of  wattled  houses 
that  they  had  shut  in  the  water  as  with  a  dam.  Too  many  flags 
and  willows  lie  over  the  colony  for  a  glimpse  of  the  telltale  wriggling 
trail  across  the  water;  but  from  the  wet  tangle  of  grass  and  moss 
comes  an  oozy  pattering. 

If  it  were  winter,  the  trapper  could  proceed  as  he  would  against 
a  beaver  colony,  staking  up  the  outlet  from  the  swamp,  trenching 
the  ice  round  the  different  houses,  breaking  open  the  roofs  and 
penning  up  any  fugitives  in  their  own  bank  burrows  till  he  and  his 
dog  and  a  spear  could  clear  out  the  gallery.  But  in  winter  there 
is  more  important  work  than  hunting  muskrat.  Muskrat-trapping 
is  for  odd  days  before  the  regular  hunt. 

Opening  the  sack  which  he  usually  carries  on  his  back,  the 
trapper  draws  out  three  dozen  small  traps  no  larger  than  a  rat 
or  mouse  trap.  Some  of  these  he  places  across  the  runways  without 
any  bait ;  for  the  muskrat  must  pass  this  way.  Some  he  smears 
with  strong-smelling  pomatum.  Some  he  baits  with  carrot  or 
apple.  Others  he  does  not  bait  at  all,  simply  laying  them  on  old 
logs  where  he  knows  the  owlets  roost  by  day.  But  each  of  the 
traps  —  bait  or  no  bait  —  he  attaches  to  a  stake  driven  into  the 
water  so  that  the  prisoner  will  be  held  under  when  he  plunges  to 
escape  till  he  is  drowned.  Otherwise,  he  would  gnaw  his  foot  free 
of  the  trap  and  disappear  in  a  burrow. 


OTHER  LITTLE  ANIMALS  293 

If  the  marsh  Is  large,  there  will  be  more  than  one  muskrat 
colony.  Having  exhausted  his  traps  on  the  first,  the  trapper  lies 
in  wait  at  the  second.  When  the  moon  comes  up  over  the  water, 
there  is  a  great  splashing  about  the  muskrat  nests ;  for  autumn 
is  the  time  for  house-building  and  the  muskrats  work  at  night.  If 
the  trapper  is  an  eastern  man,  he  will  wade  in  as  they  do  in  New 
Jersey;  but  if  he  is  a  type  of  the  western  hunter,  he  lies  on  the 
log  among  the  rushes,  popping  a  shot  at  every  head  that  appears 
in  the  moonlit  water.  His  dog  swims  and  dives  for  the  quarry. 
By  the  time  the  stupid  little  muskrats  have  taken  alarm  and  hidden, 
the  man  has  twenty  or  thirty  on  the  bank.  Going  home,  he  empties 
and  resets  the  traps. 

Thirty  marten  traps  that  yield  six  martens  do  well.  Thirty 
muskrat  traps  are  expected  to  give  thirty  muskrats.  Add  to 
that  the  twenty  shot,  and  what  does  the  day's  work  represent  ? 
Here  are  thirty  skins  of  a  coarse,  light  reddish  hair,  such  as  line 
the  poor  man's  overcoat.  These  will  sell  for  from  7^  to  $7  each. 
They  may  go  roughly  for  $4.  at  the  fur  post.  Here  are  ten  of  the 
deeper  brown  shades,  with  long  soft  fur  that  lines  a  lady's  cloak. 
They  are  fine  enough  to  pass  for  mink  with  a  little  dyeing,  or  imi- 
tation seal  if  they  are  properly  plucked.  These  will  bring  from 
$4.  to  $7.  But  here  are  ten  skins,  deep,  silky,  almost  black,  for  which 
a  Russian  officer  will  pay  high  prices,  skins  that  will  go  to  England, 
and  from  England  to  Paris,  and  from  Paris  to  St.  Petersburg  with 
accelerating  cost  mark  till  the  Russian  grandee  is  paying  $10  or 
more  for  each  pelt.  Then  this  idle  fellow's  day  has  totalled  up  a 
big  bag,  not  a  bad  day's  work,  considering  he  did  not  go  to  the 
university  for  ten  years  to  learn  his  craft,  did  not  know  what  wear 
and  tear  and  drive  meant  as  he  worked,  did  not  spend  more  than  a 
few  cents'  worth  of  shot.  But  for  his  muskrat-pelts  the  man  will 
not  get  $g  in  coin  unless  he  lives  very  near  the  great  fur  markets. 
He  will  get  powder  and  clothing  and  food  and  tobacco  whose  first 
cost  has  been  increased  a  hundredfold  by  ship  rates  and  railroad 
rates,  by  keel-boat  freight  and  pack-horse   expenses   and  portage 


294  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

charges  past  countless  rapids.  But  he  will  get  all  that  he  needs, 
all  that  he  wants,  all  that  his  labor  is  worth,  this  "lazy  vagabond" 
who  spends  half  his  time  idling  in  the  sun.  Of  how  many  other 
men  can  that  be  said  ? 

But  what  of  the  ruthless  slaughter  among  the  little  muskrats  ? 
Does  humanity  not  revolt  at  the  thought .''  Is  this  trapping  not 
after  all  brutal  butchery  ? 

Animal  kindliness  —  if  such  a  thing  exists  among  muskrats  — 
could  hardly  protest  against  the  slaughter,  seeing  the  muskrats 
themselves  wage  as  ruthless  a  war  against  water-worm  and  owlet 
as  man  wages  against  muskrats.  It  is  the  old  question,  should 
animal  life  be  sacrificed  to  preserve  human  life  ?  To  that  question 
there  is  only  one  answer.  Linings  for  coats  are  more  important 
life-savers  than  all  the  humane  societies  of  the  world  put  together. 
It  is  probable  that  the  first  thing  the  prehistoric  man  did  to  pre- 
serve his  own  life  when  he  realized  himself  was  to  slay  some  de- 
structive animal  and  appropriate  its  coat. 


II 

Sikak  the  Skunk 

Sikak  the  skunk  it  is  who  supplies  the  best  imitations  of  sable. 
The  hunter  may  follow  the  little  four-abreast  galloping  footprints 
that  lead  to  a  hole  among  stones  or  to  rotten  logs,  but  long  before 
he  has  reached  the  nesting-place  of  his  quarry  comes  a  stench 
against  which  white  blood  is  powerless.  Or  the  trapper  may  find 
an  unexpected  visitor  in  one  of  the  pens  which  he  has  dug  for  other 
animals  —  a  little  black  creature  the  shape  of  a  squirrel  and  the 
size  of  a  cat  with  white  stripings  down  his  back  and  a  bushy  tail. 
It  is  then  a  case  of  a  quick  deadly  shot,  or  the  man  will  be  put  to 
rout  by  an  odor  that  will  pollute  the  air  for  miles  around  and  drive 
him  off  that  section  of  the  hunting-field.  The  cuttle-fish  is  the  only 
other  creature  that  possesses  as  powerful  means  of  defence  of  a 


OTHER  LITTLE  ANIMALS  295 

similar  nature,  one  drop  of  the  inky  fluid  which  it  throws  out  to 
hide  it  from  pursuers  burning  the  fisherman's  eyes  Hke  scalding 
acid.  As  far  as  white  trappers  are  concerned,  sikak  is  only  taken 
by  the  chance  shots  of  idle  days.  Yet  the  Indian  hunts  the  skunk 
apparently  utterly  oblivious  of  the  smell.  Traps,  poison,  deadfalls, 
pens  are  the  Indian  weapons  against  the  skunk ;  and  a  Cree  will 
deliberately  skin  and  stretch  a  pelt  in  an  atmosphere  that  is  blue 
with  what  is  poison  to  the  white  man. 

A  story  is  told  of  three  trappers  hunting  the  skunk  on  the  North 
Saskatchewan.  One  was  an  Englishman  who  had  been  long  in 
the  service  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company  and  knew  all  the  animals 
of  the  north.  The  second  was  the  guide,  a  French-Canadian,  and 
the  third  a  Sandy,  fresh  "frae  oot  the  land  o'  heather."  The  men 
were  wakened  one  night  by  the  noise  of  some  animal  scrambling 
through  the  window  into  their  cabin  and  rummaging  in  the  dark 
among  the  provisions.  The  Frenchman  sprang  for  a  light  and 
Sandy  got  hold  of  his  gun. 

"Losh,  mon,  it's  a  wee  bit  beastie  a'  strip't  black  and  white  wi'  a 
tail  like  a  so'dier's  cockade!" 

That  information  brought  the  Englishman  to  his  feet  howling, 
"Don't  shoot  it!  Don't  shoot  it!  Leave  that  thing  alone,  I  tell 
you!" 

But  Sandy  being  a  true  son  of  Scotia  with  a  Presbyterian  love 
of  argument  wished  to  debate  the  question. 

"An'  what  for  wu'd  a  leave  it  eating  a'  the  oatmeal .''  I'll  no 
leave  it  rampagin'  th'  eatables  —  I  wull  be  pokin'  it  oot !  —  shoo  ! 
—  shoo!" 

At  that  the  Frenchman  flung  down  the  light  and  bolted  for  the 
door,  followed  by  the  English  trader  cursing  between  set  teeth 
that  before  "that  blundering  blockhead  had  argued  the  matter" 
something  would  happen. 

Something  did  happen. 

Sandy  came  through  the  door  with  such  precipitate  haste  that 
the  topmost  beam  brought  his  head  a  mighty  thwack,  roaring  out 


296  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

at  the  top  of  his  voice  that  the  dell  was  after  him  for  a'  the  sins 
that  iver  he  had  committed  since  he  was  born. 

Ill 

Wenujk  the  Badger 

Badger,  too,  is  one  of  the  furs  taken  by  the  trapper  on  idle  days. 
East  of  St.  Paul  and  Winnipeg,  the  fur  was  formerly  unknown,  or 
if  known,  so  badly  prepared  that  it  is  scarcely  recognizable  for 
badger.  This  is  probably  owing  to  differences  in  climate.  Badger 
in  its  perfect  state  is  a  long  soft  fur,  resembling  wood  marten,  with 
deep  over  hairs  almost  the  length  of  one's  hand  and  as  dark  as 
marten,  with  under  hairs  as  thick  and  soft  and  yielding  as  swan's- 
down,  shading  in  color  from  fawn  to  grayish  white.  East  of  the 
Mississippi,  there  is  too  much  damp  in  the  atmosphere  for  such  a 
long  soft  fur.  Consequently  specimens  of  badger  seen  in  the  East 
must  either  be  sheared  of  the  long  over  hairs  or  left  to  mat  and 
tangle  on  the  first  rainy  day.  In  New  York,  Quebec,  Montreal, 
and  Toronto  —  places  where  the  finest  furs  should  be  on  sale  if 
anywhere  —  I  have  again  and  again  asked  for  badger,  only  to  be 
shown  a  dull,  matted,  short,  fawnish  fur  not  much  superior  to  cheap 
dyed  furs.  Only  of  late  years  has  demand  for  badger  grown  in  the 
East.  In  the  North-west  the  most  common  mist  during  the  winter 
is  a  frost  mist  that  is  more  a  snow  than  a  rain,  so  there  is  little 
injury  to  furs  from  moisture.  Here  the  badger  is  prime,  long,  thick 
and  silky,  almost  as  attractive  as  ermine  if  only  it  were  enhanced 
by  as  high  a  price.  Whether  badger  will  ever  grow  in  favor  like 
muskrat  or  'coon,  and  play  an  important  part  in  the  returns  of 
the  fur  exporters,  is  doubtful.  The  world  takes  its  fashions  from 
European  capitals ;  and  European  capitals  are  too  damp  for  badger 
to  be  in  fashion  with  them.  Certainly,  with  the  private  dealers 
of  the  North  and  West,  badger  is  yearly  becoming  more  important. 

Like  the  muskrat,  badger  is  prime  in  the  autumn.  Wherever 
the  hunting-grounds  of  the  animals  are,  there  will  the  hunting- 


OTHER  LITTLE  ANIMALS  297 

grounds  of  the  trapper  be.  Badgers  run  most  where  gophers  sit 
sunning  themselves  on  the  clay  mounds,  ready  to  bolt  down  to 
their  subterranean  burrows  on  the  first  approach  of  an  enemy. 
Eternal  enemies  these  two  are,  gopher  and  badger,  though  they 
both  live  in  ground  holes,  nest  their  lairs  with  grasses,  run  all 
summer  and  sleep  all  winter,  and  alike  prey  on  the  creatures  smaller 
than  themselves  —  mice,  moles  and  birds.  The  gopher,  or  ground 
squirrel,  is  smaller  than  the  wood  squirrel,  while  the  badger  is 
larger  than  a  Manx  cat,  with  a  shape  that  varies  according  to  the 
exigencies  of  the  situation.  Normally,  lie  is  a  flattish,  fawn- 
colored  beast,  with  a  turtle-shaped  body,  little  round  head,  and 
small  legs  with  unusually  strong  claws.  Ride  after  the  badger 
across  the  prairie  and  he  stretches  out  in  long,  lithe  shape,  resem- 
bling a  baby  cougar,  turning  at  every  pace  or  two  to  snap  at  your 
horse,  then  off  again  at  a  hulking  scramble  of  astonishing  speed. 
Pour  water  down  his  burrow  to  compel  him  to  come  up  or  down, 
and  he  swells  out  his  body,  completely  filling  the  passage,  so  that 
his  head,  which  is  downward,  is  in  dry  air,  while  his  hind  quarters 
alone  are  in  the  water.  In  captivity  the  badger  is  a  business-like 
little  body,  with  very  sharp  teeth,  of  which  his  keeper  must  beware, 
and  some  of  the  tricks  of  the  skunk,  but  inclined,  on  the  whole, 
to  mind  his  affairs  if  you  will  mind  yours.  Once  a  day  regularly 
every  afternoon  out  of  his  lair  he  emerges  for  the  most  comical 
sorts  of  athletic  exercises.  Hour  after  hour  he  will  trot  diagonally 
—  because  that  gives  him  the  longest  run  —  from  corner  to  corner 
of  his  pen,  rearing  up  on  his  hind  legs  as  he  reaches  one  corner, 
rubbing  the  back  of  his  head,  then  down  again  and  across  to  the 
other  corner,  where  he  repeats  the  performance.  There  can  be 
no  reason  for  the  badger  doing  this,  unless  it  was  his  habit  in  the 
wilds  when  he  trotted  about  leaving  dumb  signs  on  mud  banks  and 
brushwood  by  which  others  of  his  kind  might  know  where  to  find 
him  at  stated  times. 

Sunset  is  the  time  when  he  is  almost  sure  to  be  among  the 
gopher  burrows.     In  vain  the  saucy  jay  shrieks  out  a  warning  to 


298  THE  FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

the  gophers.  Of  all  the  prairie  creatures,  they  are  the  stupidest, 
the  most  beset  with  curiosity  to  know  what  that  jay's  shriek  may 
mean.  Sunning  themselves  in  the  last  rays  of  daylight,  the  gophers 
perch  on  their  hind  legs  to  wait  developments  of  what  the  jay 
announced.  But  the  badger's  fur  and  the  gopher  mounds  are 
almost  the  same  color.  He  has  pounced  on  some  playful 
youngsters  before  the  rest  see  him.  Then  there  is  a  wild  scuttling 
down  to  the  depths  of  the  burrows.  That,  too,  is  vain ;  for  the 
badger  begins  ripping  up  the  clay  bank  like  a  grizzly,  down  — 
down  —  in  pursuit,  two,  three,  five  feet,  even  twelve. 

Then  is  seen  one  of  the  most  curious  freaks  in  all  the  animal 
life  of  the  prairie.  The  underground  galleries  of  the  gophers  con- 
nect and  lead  up  to  different  exits.  As  the  furious  badger  comes 
closer  and  closer  on  the  cowering  gophers,  the  little  cowards  lose 
heart,  dart  up  the  galleries  to  open  doors,  and  try  to  escape  through 
the  grass  of  the  prairie.  But  no  sooner  is  the  badger  hard  at  work 
than  a  gray  form  seems  to  rise  out  of  the  earth,  a  coyote  who  had 
been  slinking  to  the  rear  all  the  while ;  and  as  the  terrified  gophers 
scurry  here,  scurry  there,  coyote's  white  teeth  snap  !  —  snap  !  He 
is  here  —  there  —  everywhere  —  pouncing  —  jumping  —  having  the 
fun  of  his  life,  gobbling  gophers  as  cats  catch  mice.  Down  in  the 
bottom  of  the  burrow,  the  badger  may  get  half  a  dozen  poor  cooped 
huddling  prisoners ;  but  the  coyote  up  on  the  prairie  has  devoured 
a  whole  colony. 

Do  these  two,  badger  and  coyote,  consciously  hunt  together  f 
Some  old  trappers  vow  they  do  —  others  just  as  vehemently  that 
they  don't.  The  fact  remains  that  wherever  the  badger  goes 
gopher-hunting  on  an  unsettled  prairie,  there  the  coyote  skulks, 
reaping  reward  of  all  the  badger's  work.  The  coincidence  is  no 
stranger  than  the  well-known  fact  that  sword-fish  and  thrasher 
—  two  different  fish  —  always  league  together  to  attack  the  whale. 

One  thing  only  can  save  the  gopher  colony,  and  that  is  the  gun 
barrel  across  yon  earth  mound  where  a  trapper  lies  in  wait  for  the 
coming  of  the  badger. 


OTHER  LITTLE  ANIMALS  299 

IV 

The  ^Coon 

Sir  Alexander  MacKenzie  reported  that  in  1798  the  North- 
west Company  sent  out  only  100  raccoon  from  the  fur  country. 
To-day,  raccoon  is  a  fur  in  growing  demand.  What  brought  about 
the  change.'*  Simply  an  appreciation  of  the  qualities  of  'coon, 
which  combines  the  greatest  warmth  with  the  lightest  weight  and 
is  especially  adapted  for  a  cold  climate  and  constant  wear.  What 
was  said  of  badger  applies  with  greater  force  to  'coon.  The  'coon 
in  the  East  is  associated  in  one's  mind  with  cabbies,  in  the  West 
with  fashionably  dressed  men  and  women.  And  there  is  just  as 
wide  a  difference  in  the  quality  of  the  fur  as  in  the  quality  of  the 
people.  The  cabbies'  'coon  coat  is  a  rough  yellow  fur  with  red 
stripes.  The  Westerner's  'coon  is  a  silky  brown  fur  with  black 
stripes.  One  represents  the  fall  hunt  of  men  and  boys  round  hollow 
logs,  the  other  the  midwinter  hunt  of  a  professional  trapper  in  the 
Far  North.  A  dog  usually  bays  the  'coon  out  of  hiding  in  the  East. 
Tiny  tracks,  like  a  child's  hand,  tell  the  Northern  hunter  where 
to  set  his  traps. 

Wahboos  the  rabbit,  musquash  the  muskrat,  sikak  the  skunk, 
wenusk  the  badger,  and  the  common  'coon  —  these  are  the  little 
chaps  whose  hunt  fills  the  idle  days  of  the  trapper's  busy  life.  At 
night,  before  the  rough  stone  hearth  which  he  has  built  in  his  cabin, 
he  is  still  busy  by  firelight  preparing  their  pelts.  Each  skin  must  be 
stretched  and  cured.  Turning  the  skin  fur  side  in,  the  trapper 
pushes  into  the  pelt  a  wedge-shaped  slab  of  spliced  cedar.  Into 
the  splice  he  shoves  another  wedge  of  wood  which  he  hammers  in, 
each  blow  widening  the  space  and  stretching  the  skin.  All  pelts 
are  stretched  fur  in  but  the  fox.  Tacking  the  stretched  skin  on  a 
flat  board,  the  trapper  hangs  it  to  dry  till  he  carries  all  to  the  fort ; 
unless,  indeed,  he  should  need  a  garment  for  himself  —  cap,  coat  or 
gauntlets  —  in  which  case  he  takes  out  a  square  needle  and  passes 
his  evenings  like  a  tailor,  sewing. 


CHAPTER  IX 

THE  RARE  FURS  — HOW  THE  TRAPPER  TAKES  SAKWASEW  THE 
MINK,  NEKIK  THE  OTTER,  WUCHAK  THE  FISHER,  AND  WAPIS- 
TAN  THE  MARTEN. 


Sakwasew  the  Mink 

There  are  other  little  chaps  with  more  valuable  fur  than  mus- 
quash, whose  skin  seldom  attains  higher  honour  than  Inside  linings, 
and  wahboos,  whose  snowy  coat  Is  put  to  the  Indignity  of  Imitating 
ermine  with  a  dotting  of  black  cat  for  the  ermine's  jet  tip.  There 
are  mink  and  otter  and  fisher  and  fox  and  ermine  and  sable,  all  little 
fellows  with  pelts  worth  their  weight  in  coin  of  the  realm. 

On  one  of  those  idle  days  when  the  trapper  seems  to  be  doing 
nothing  but  lying  on  his  back  In  the  sun,  he  has  witnessed  a  curious, 
but  common,  battle  In  pantomime  between  bird  and  beast.  A 
prairie-hawk  circles  and  drops,  lifts  and  wheels  again  with  monot- 
onous silent  persistence  above  the  swamp.  What  quarry  does  he 
seek,  this  lawless  forager  of  the  upper  air  still  hunting  a  hidden 
nook  of  the  low  prairie  "i  If  he  were  out  purely  for  exercise,  like 
the  little  badger  when  It  goes  rubbing  the  back  of  Its  head  from 
post  to  post,  there  would  be  a  buzzing  of  wings  and  shrill  lonely 
callings  to  an  unseen  mate. 

But  the  circling  hawk  Is  as  silent  as  the  very  personification  of 
death.  Apparently  he  can't  make  up  his  mind  for  the  death-drop 
on  some  rat  or  frog  down  there  In  the  swamp.  The  trapper  notices 
that  the  hawk  keeps  circling  directly  above  the  place  where  the 
waters  of  the  swamp  tumble  from  the  ravine  in  a  small  cataract 

300 


THE   RARE   FURS  301 

to  join  a  lower  river.  He  knows,  too,  from  the  rich  orange  of  the 
plumage  that  the  hawk  is  young.  An  older  fellow  would  not  be 
advertising  his  intentions  in  this  fashion.  Besides,  an  older  hawk 
would  have  russet-gray  feathering.  Is  the  rascally  young  hawk 
meditating  a  clutch  of  talons  round  some  of  the  unsuspecting  trout 
that  usually  frequent  the  quiet  pools  below  a  waterfall  ?  Or  does 
he  aim  at  bigger  game  ?  A  young  hawk  is  bold  with  the  courage 
that  has  not  yet  learned  the  wisdom  of  caution.  That  is  why  there 
are  so  many  more  of  the  brilliant  young  red  hawks  in  our  museums 
than  old  grizzled  gray  veterans  whose  craft  circumvents  the  speci- 
men hunter's  cunning.  Now  the  trapper  comes  to  have  as  keen  a 
sense  oi  feel  for  all  the  creatures  of  the  wilds  as  the  creatures  of  the 
wilds  have  for  man ;  so  he  shifts  his  position  that  he  may  find  what 
is  attracting  the  hawk. 

Down  on  the  pebbled  beach  below  the  waterfall  lies  an  auburn 
bundle  of  fur,  about  the  size  of  a  very  long,  slim,  short-legged  cat, 
still  as  a  stone  —  some  member  of  the  weasel  family  gorged  torpid 
with  fish,  stretched  out  full  length  to  sleep  in  the  sun.  To  sleep, 
ah,  yes,  and  as  the  Danish  prince  said,  "perchance  to  dream"; 
for  all  the  little  fellows  of  river  and  prairie  take  good  care  never  to 
sleep  where  they  are  exposed  to  their  countless  enemies.  This 
sleep  of  the  weasel  arouses  the  man's  suspicion.  The  trapper  draws 
out  his  field-glass.  The  sleeper  is  a  mink,  and  its  sleep  is  a  sham,  with 
beady,  red  eyes  blinking  a  deal  too  lively  for  real  death.  Why 
does  it  lie  on  its  back  rigid  and  straight  as  if  it  were  dead,  with  all 
four  tiny  paws  clutched  out  stiff  '^.  The  trapper  scans  the  surface  of 
.the  swamp  to  see  if  some  foolish  muskrat  is  swimming  dangerously 
near  the  sleeping  mink. 

Presently  the  hawk  circles  lower  —  lower !  —  Drops  straight 
as  a  stone !  Its  talons  are  almost  in  the  mink's  body,  when  of  a 
sudden  the  sleeper  awakens  —  awakens  —  with  a  leap  of  the  four 
stiff  little  feet  and  a  darting  spear-thrust  of  snapping  teeth  deep  in  the 
neck  of  the  hawk  !  At  first  the  hawk  rises,  tearing  furiously  at  the 
clinging  mink  with  its  claws.     The  wings  sag.     Down  bird  and 


302  THE  FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

beast  fall.  Over  they  roll  on  the  sandy  beach,  hawk  and  mink, 
over  and  over  with  a  thrashing  of  the  hawk's  wings  to  beat  the 
treacherous  little  vampire  off.  Now  the  blood-sucker  is  on  top 
clutching  —  clutching !  Now  the  bird  flounders  up,  craning  his 
neck  from  the  death-grip.  Then  the  hawk  falls  on  his  back.  His 
wings  are  prone.     They  cease  to  flutter. 

Running  to  the  bank  the  trapper  is  surprised  to  see  the  little 
blood-sucker  making  off  with  the  prey  instead  of  deserting  it  as  all 
creatures  akin  to  the  weasel  family  usually  do.  That  means  a 
family  of  mink  somewhere  near,  to  be  given  their  first  lesson  in 
bird-hunting,  in  mink-hawking,  by  the  body  of  this  poor,  dead, 
foolish  gyrfalcon. 

By  a  red  mark  here,  by  a  feather  there,  crushed  grass  as  of 
something  dragged,  a  little  webbed  footprint  on  the  wet  clay,  a 
tiny  marking  of  double  dots  where  the  feet  have  crossed  a  dry  stone, 
the  trapper  slowly  takes  up  the  trail  of  the  mink.  Mink  are  not 
prime  till  the  late  fall.  Then  the  reddish  fur  assumes  the  shades 
of  the  russet  grasses  where  they  run  until  the  white  of  winter  covers 
the  land.  Then  —  as  if  nature  were  to  exact  avengement  for  all 
the  red  slaughter  the  mink  has  wrought  during  the  rest  of  the  year 
—  his  coat  becomes  dark  brown,  almost  black,  the  very  shade  that 
renders  him  most  conspicuous  above  snow  to  all  the  enemies  of  the 
mink  world.  But  while  the  trapper  has  no  intention  of  destroying 
what  would  be  worthless  now  but  will  be  valuable  in  the  winter, 
it  is  not  every  day  that  even  a  trapper  has  a  chance  to  trail  a  mink 
back  to  its  nest  and  see  the  young  family. 

But  suddenly  the  trail  stops.  Here  is  a  sandy  patch  with  some 
tumbled  stones  under  a  tangle  of  grasses  and  a  rivulet  not  a  foot 
away.  Ah  —  there  it  is  —  a  nest  or  lair,  a  tiny  hole  almost  hidden 
by  the  rushes  !  But  the  nest  seems  empty.  Fast  as  the  trapper 
has  come,  the  mink  came  faster  and  hid  her  family.  To  one  side, 
the  hawk  had  been  dropped  among  the  rushes.  The  man  pokes  a 
stick  in  the  lair  but  finds  nothing.  Putting  in  his  hand,  he  is 
dragging    out    bones,   feathers,   skeleton    muskrats,   putrid   frogs, 


THE  RARE   FURS  303 

promiscuous  remnants  of  other  quarries  brought  to  the  burrow 
by  the  mink,  when  a  little  cattish  s-p-i-t!  almost  touches  his  hand. 
His  palm  closes  over  something  warm,  squirming,  smaller  than  a 
kitten,  with  very  downy  fur  on  a  soft,  mouse-like  skin,  eyes  that 
are  still  blind  and  a  tiny  mouth  that  neither  meows  nor  squeaks, 
just  spits!  —  spits!  —  spits!  —  in  impotent,  viperish  fury.  All 
the  other  minklets  the  mother  had  succeeded  in  hiding  under  the 
grasses,  but  somehow  this  one  had  been  left.  Will  he  take  it  home 
and  try  the  experiment  of  rearing  a  young  mink  with  a  family  of 
kittens  } 

The  trapper  calls  to  mind  other  experiments.  There  was  the 
little  beaver  that  chewed  up  his  canoe  and  gnawed  a  hole  of  escape 
through  the  door.  There  were  the  three  little  bob-cats  left  in  the 
woods  behind  his  cabin  last  year  when  he  refrained  from  setting  out 
traps  and  tied  up  his  dog  to  see  if  he  could  not  catch  the  whole 
family,  mother  and  kittens,  for  an  Eastern  museum.  Furtively  at 
first,  the  mother  had  come  to  feed  her  kittens.  Then  the  man  had 
put  out  rugs  to  keep  the  kittens  warm  and  lain  in  wait  for  the 
mother ;  but  no  sooner  did  she  see  her  offspring  comfortably  cared 
for,  than  she  deserted  them  entirely,  evidently  acting  on  the  proverb 
that  the  most  gracious  enemy  is  the  most  dangerous,  or  else  deciding 
that  the  kits  were  so  well  off  that  she  was  not  needed.  Adopting 
the  three  little  wild-cats,  the  trapper  had  reared  them  past  blind- 
eyes,  past  colic  and  dumps  and  all  the  youthful  ills  to  which  live 
kittens  are  heirs,  when  trouble  began.  The  longing  for  the  wilds 
came.  Even  catnip  green  and  senna  tea  boiled  can't  cure  that. 
So  keenly  did  the  gipsy  longing  come  to  one  little  bob  that  he 
perished  escaping  to  the  woods  by  way  of  the  chimney  flue.  The 
second  little  bob  succeeded  in  escaping  through  a  parchment  stop- 
gap that  served  the  trapper  as  a  window.  And  the  third  bobby 
dealt  such  an  ill-tempered  gash  to  the  dog's  nose  that  the  combat 
ended  in  instant  death  for  the  cat. 

Thinking  over  these  experiments,  the  trapper  wisely  puts  the 
mink  back  in  the  nest  with  words  which  it  would  have  been  well  for 


304  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

that  little  ball  of  down  to  have  understood.  He  told  it  he  would 
come  back  for  it  next  winter  and  to  be  sure  to  have  its  best  black 
coat  on.  For  the  little  first-year  minks  wear  dark  coats,  almost  as 
fine  as  Russian  sable.  Yes  —  he  reflects,  poking  it  back  to  the 
hole  and  retreating  quickly  so  that  the  mother  will  return  —  better 
leave  it  till  the  winter ;  for  wasn't  it  Koot  who  put  a  mink  among 
his  kittens,  only  to  have  the  little  viper  set  on  them  with  tooth  and 
claw  as  soon  as  its  eyes  opened  .''  Also  mink  are  bad  neighbors 
to  a  poultry-yard.  Forty  chickens  in  a  single  night  will  the  mink 
destroy,  not  for  food  but  —  to  quote  man's  words  —  for  the  zest 
of  the  sport.  The  mink,  you  must  remember,  like  other  pot- 
hunters, can  boast  of  a  big  bag. 

The  trapper  did  come  back  next  fall.  It  was  when  he  was 
ranging  all  the  swamp-lands  for  beaver-dams.  Swamp  lands  often 
mean  beaver-dams ;  and  trappers  always  note  what  stops  the 
current  of  a  sluggish  stream.  Frequently  it  is  a  beaver  colony 
built  across  a  valley  in  the  mountains,  or  stopping  up  the  outlet  of 
a  slough.  The  trapper  was  sleeping  under  his  canoe  on  the  banks 
of  the  river  where  the  swamp  tumbled  out  from  the  ravine.  Before 
retiring  to  what  was  a  boat  by  day  and  a  bed  by  night,  he  had  set 
out  a  fish  net  and  some  loose  lines  —  which  the  flow  of  the  current 
would  keep  in  motion  —  below  the  waterfall.  Carelessly,  next 
day,  he  threw  the  fish-heads  among  the  stones.  The  second  morning 
he  found  such  a  multitude  of  little  tracks  dotting  the  rime  of  the 
hoar  frost  that  he  erected  a  tent  back  from  the  waterfall,  and 
decided  to  stay  trapping  there  till  the  winter.  The  fish-heads 
were  no  longer  thrown  away.  They  were  left  among  the  stones  in 
small  steel-traps  weighted  with  other  stones,  or  attached  to  a  loose 
stick  that  would  impede  flight.  And  if  the  poor  gy rfalcon  could 
have  seen  the  mink  held  by  the  jaws  of  a  steel-trap,  hissing,  snarling, 
breaking  its  teeth  on  the  iron,  spitting  out  all  the  rage  of  its  wicked 
nature,  the  bird  would  have  been  avenged. 

And  as  winter  deepened,  the  quality  of  minks  taken  from  the 
traps  became  darker,  silkier,  crisper,  almost  brown  black  in  some 


THE   RARE   FURS  305 

of  the  young,  but  for  light  fur  on  the  under  lip.  The  Indians  say 
that  sakwasew  the  mink  would  sell  his  family  for  a  fish,  and  as  long 
as  fish  lay  among  the  stones,  the  trapper  gathered  his  harvest  of 
fur:  reddish  mink  that  would  be  made  into  little  neck  ruffs  and 
collar  pieces,  reddish  brown  mink  that  would  be  sewed  into  costly 
coats  and  cloaks,  rare  brownish  black  mink  that  would  be  put  into 
the  beautiful  flat  scarf  collars  almost  as  costly  as  a  full  coat.  And 
so  the  mink-hunt  went  on  merrily  for  the  man  till  the  midwinter 
lull  came  at  Christmas.     For  that  year  the  mink-hunt  was  over. 

II 

Nekik  the  Otter 

Sakwasew  'was  not  the  only  fisher  at  the  pool  below  the  falls. 
On  one  of  those  idle  days  when  the  trapper  sat  lazily  by  the  river 
side,  a  round  head  slightly  sunburned  from  black  to  russet  had 
bobbed  up  to  the  surface  of  the  water,  peered  sharply  at  the  man 
sitting  so  still,  paddled  little  flipper-like  feet  about,  then  ducked 
down  again.  Motionless  as  the  mossed  log  under  him  sits  the  man ; 
and  in  a  moment  up  comes  the  little  black  head  again,  round  as  a 
golf  ball,  about  the  size  of  a  very  large  cat,  followed  by  three  other 
little  bobbing  heads  —  a  mother  otter  teaching  her  babies  to  dive 
and  swim  and  duck  from  the  river  surface  to  the  burrows  below 
the  water  along  the  river  bank.  Perhaps  the  trapper  has  found  a 
dead  fish  along  this  very  bank  with  only  the  choice  portions  of  the 
body  eaten  —  a  sure  sign  that  nekik  the  otter,  the  little  epicure 
of  the  water  world,  has  been  fishing  at  this  river. 

With  a  scarcely  perceptible  motion,  the  man  turns  his  head 
to  watch  the  swimmers.  Instantly,  down  they  plunge,  mother  and 
babies,  to  come  to  the  surface  again  higher  up-stream,  evidently 
working  up-current  like  the  beaver  in  spring  for  a  glorious  frolic 
in  the  cold  clear  waters  of  the  upper  sources.  At  one  place  on  the 
sandy  beach  they  all  wade  ashore.  The  man  utters  a  slight  "Hiss  !" 
Away  they  scamper,  the  foolish  youngsters,  landward  instead  of 


3o6  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

to  the  safe  water  as  the  hesitating  mother  would  have  them  do, 
all  the  little  feet  scrambling  over  the  sand  with  the  funny  short  steps 
of  a  Chinese  lady  in  tight  boots.  Maternal  care  proves  stronger 
than  fear.  The  frightened  mother  follows  the  young  otter  and  will 
no  doubt  read  them  a  sound  lecture  on  land  dangers  when  she  has 
rounded  them  back  to  the  safe  water  higher  up  stream. 

Of  all  wild  creatures,  none  is  so  crafty  in  concealing  its  lairs 
as  the  otter.  Where  did  this  family  come  from .''  They  had  not 
been  swimming  up-stream ;  for  the  man  had  been  watching  on  the 
river  bank  long  before  they  appeared  on  the  surface.  Stripping,  the 
trapper  dives  in  mid-stream,  then  half  wades,  half  swims  along  the 
steepest  bank,  running  his  arm  against  the  clay  cliff  to  find  a  burrow. 
On  land  he  could  not  do  this  at  the  lair  of  the  otter ;  for  the  smell 
of  the  man-touch  would  be  left  on  his  trail,  and  the  otter,  keener 
of  scent  and  fear  than  the  mink,  would  take  alarm.  But  for  the 
same  reason  that  the  river  is  the  safest  refuge  for  the  otter,  it  is 
the  surest  hunting  for  the  man  —  water  does  not  keep  the  scent  of 
a  trail.  So  the  man  runs  his  arm  along  the  bank.  The  river  is 
the  surest  hunting  for  the  man,  but  not  the  safest.  If  an  old  male 
were  in  the  bank  burrow  now,  or  happened  to  be  emerging  from 
grass-lined  subterranean  air  chambers  above  the  bank  gallery,  it 
might  be  serious  enough  for  the  exploring  trapper.  One  bite  of 
nekik  the  otter  has  crippled  many  an  Indian.  Knowing  from  the 
remnants  of  half-eaten  fish  and  from  the  holes  in  the  bank  that  he 
has  found  an  otter  runway,  the  man  goes  home  as  well  satisfied 
as  if  he  had  done  a  good  day's  work. 

And  so  that  winter  when  he  had  camped  below  the  swamp  for 
the  mink-hunt,  the  trapper  was  not  surprised  one  morning  to 
find  a  half-eaten  fish  on  the  river  bank.  Sakwasew  the  mink  takes 
good  care  to  leave  no  remnants  of  his  greedy  meal.  What  he  cannot 
eat  he  caches.  Even  if  he  has  strangled  a  dozen  water-rats  in  one 
hunt,  they  will  be  dragged  in  a  heap  and  covered.  The  half-eaten 
fish  left  exposed  is  not  mink's  work.  Otter  has  been  here  and  otter 
will  come  back;    for  as  the  frost  hardens,  only  those  pools  below 


THE  RARE  FURS  307 

the  falls  keep  free  from  ice.  No  use  setting  traps  with  fish-heads 
as  long  as  fresh  fish  are  to  be  had  for  the  taking.  Besides,  the  man 
has  done  nothing  to  conceal  his  tracks ;  and  each  morning  the  half- 
eaten  fish  lie  farther  off  the  line  of  the  man-trail. 

By  and  by  the  man  notices  that  no  more  half-eaten  fish  are 
on  his  side  of  the  river.  Little  tracks  of  webbed  feet  furrowing  a 
deep  rut  in  the  soft  snow  of  the  frozen  river  tell  that  nekik  has  taken 
alarm  and  is  fishing  from  the  other  side.  And  when  Christmas 
comes  with  a  dwindling  of  the  mink-hunt,  the  man,  too,  crosses  to 
the  other  side.  Here  he  finds  that  the  otter  tracks  have  worn  a  path 
that  is  almost  a  toboggan  slide  down  the  crusted  snow  bank  to  the 
iced  edge  of  the  pool.  By  this  time  nekik's  pelt  is  prime,  almost 
black,  and  as  glossy  as  floss.  By  this  time,  too,  the  fish  are  scarce 
and  the  epicure  has  become  ravenous  as  a  pauper.  One  night  when 
the  trapper  was  reconnoitring  the  fish  hole,  he  had  approached  the 
snow  bank  so  noiselessly  that  he  came  on  a  whole  colony  of  otters 
without  their  knowledge  of  his  presence.  Down  the  snow  bank 
they  tumbled,  head-first,  tail-first,  slithering  through  the  snow  with 
their  little  paws  braced,  rolling  down  on  their  backs  like  lads  upset 
from  a  toboggan,  otter  after  otter  till  the  man  learned  that  the 
little  beasts  were  not  fishing  at  all,  but  coasting  the  snow  bank  like 
youngsters  on  a  night  frolic.  No  sooner  did  one  reach  the  bottom 
than  up  he  scampered  to  repeat  the  fun;  and  sometimes  two  or 
three  went  down  in  a  rolling  bunch  mixed  up  at  the  foot  of  a  slide 
as  badly  as  a  couple  of  toboggans  that  were  unpremeditatedly 
changing  their  occupants.  Bears  wrestle.  The  kittens  of  all  the 
cat  tribe  play  hide  and  seek.  Little  badger  finds  it  fun  to  run 
round  rubbing  the  back  of  his  head  on  things ;  and  here  was  nekik 
the  otter  at  the  favorite  amusement  of  his  kind  —  coasting  down 
a  snow  bank. 

If  the  trapper  were  an  Indian,  he  would  lie  in  wait  at  the  landing- 
place  and  spear  the  otter  as  they  came  from  the  water.  But  the 
white  man's  craft  is  deeper.  He  does  not  wish  to  frighten  the  otter 
till  the  last  has  been  taken.     Coming  to  the  slide  by  day,  he  baits 


3o8  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

a  steel-trap  with  fishes  and  buries  it  in  the  snow  just  where  the 
otter  will  be  coming  down  the  hill  or  up  from  the  pool.  Perhaps 
he  places  a  dozen  such  traps  around  the  hole  with  nothing  visible 
but  the  frozen  fish  lying  on  the  surface.  If  he  sets  his  traps  during  a 
snow-fall,  so  much  the  better.  His  own  tracks  will  be  obliterated 
and  the  otter's  nose  will  discover  the  fish.  Then  he  takes  a  bag 
filled  with  some  substance  of  animal  odor,  pomatum,  fresh  meat, 
pork,  or  he  may  use  the  flesh  side  of  a  fresh  deer-hide.  This  he 
drags  over  the  snow  where  he  has  stepped.  He  may  even  use  a 
fresh  hide  to  handle  the  traps,  as  a  waiter  uses  a  serviette  to  pass 
plates.  There  must  be  no  man-smell,  no  man-track  near  the  otter 
traps. 

While  the  mink-hunt  is  fairly  over  by  midwinter,  otter-trapping 
lasts  from  October  to  May.  The  value  of  all  rare  furs,  mink, 
otter,  marten,  ermine,  varies  with  two  things:  (i)  the  latitude 
of  the  hunting-field ;  (2)  the  season  of  the  hunt.  For  instance, 
ask  a  trapper  of  Minnesota  or  Lake  Superior  what  he  thinks  of  the 
ermine,  and  he  will  tell  you  that  it  is  a  miserable  sort  of  weasel  of  a 
dirty  brown  not  worth  twenty-five  cents  a  skin.  Ask  a  trapper  of 
the  North  Saskatchewan  what  he  thinks  of  ermine ;  and  he  will  tell 
you  it  is  a  pretty  little  whitish  creature  good  for  fur  if  trapped  late 
enough  in  the  winter  and  always  useful  as  a  lining.  But  ask  a 
trapper  of  the  Arctic  about  the  ermine,  and  the  describes  it  as  the 
finest  fur  that  is  taken  except  the  silver  fox,  white  and  soft  as  swan's- 
down,  with  a  tail-tip  like  black  onyx.  This  difference  in  the  fur 
of  the  animal  explains  the  wide  variety  of  prices  paid.  Ermine 
not  worth  twenty-five  cents  in  Wisconsin  might  be  worth  ten  times 
as  much  on  the  Saskatchewan. 

So  it  is  with  the  otter.  All  trapped  between  latitude  thirty- 
five  and  sixty  is  good  fur;  and  the  best  is  that  taken  toward  the 
end  of  winter  when  scarcely  a  russet  hair  should  be  found  in  the 
long  over-fur  of  nekik's  coat. 


THE  RARE  FURS  309 

III 

Wuchak  the  Fisher,  or  Pekan 

Wherever  the  waste  of  fish  or  deer  is  thrown,  there  will  be 
found  lines  of  double  tracks  not  so  large  as  the  wild-cat's,  not  so 
small  as  the  otter's,  and  without  the  same  webbing  as  the  mink's. 
This  is  wuchak  the  fisher,  or  pekan,  commonly  called  "the  black 
cat"  —  who,  in  spite  of  his  fishy  name,  hates  water  as  cats  hate  it. 
And  the  tracks  are  double  because  pekan  travel  in  pairs.  He  is 
found  along  the  banks  of  streams  because  he  preys  on  fish  and 
fisher,  on  mink  and  otter  and  muskrat,  on  frogs  and  birds  and 
creatures  that  come  to  drink.  He  is,  after  all,  a  very  greedy  fellow, 
not  at  all  particular  about  his  diet,  and  Hke  all  gluttons,  easily 
snared.  While  mink  and  otter  are  about,  the  trapper  will  waste 
no  steel-traps  on  pekan.  A  deadfall  will  act  just  as  effectively; 
but  there  is  one  point  requiring  care.  Pekan  has  a  sharp  nose. 
It  is  his  nose  that  brings  him  to  all  carrion  just  as  surely  as  hawks 
come  to  pick  dead  bones.  But  that  same  nose  will  tell  him  of  man's 
presence.  So  when  the  trapper  has  built  his  pen  of  logs  so  that  the 
front  log  or  deadfall  will  crush  down  on  the  back  of  an  intruder 
tugging  at  the  bait  inside,  he  overlays  all  with  leaves  and  brush  to 
quiet  the  pekan's  suspicions.  Besides,  the  pekan  has  many  tricks 
akin  to  the  wolverine.  He  is  an  inveterate  thief.  There  is  a  well- 
known  instance  of  Hudson's  Bay  trappers  having  a  line  of  one 
hundred  and  fifty  marten  traps  stretching  for  fifty  miles  robbed  of 
their  bait  by  pekan.  The  men  shortened  the  line  to  thirty  miles 
and  for  six  times  in  succession  did  pekan  destroy  the  traps.  Then 
the  men  set  themselves  to  trap  the  robber.  He  will  rifle  a  deadfall 
from  the  slanting  back  roof  where  there  is  no  danger ;  so  the  trapper 
overlays  the  back  with  heavy  brush. 

Pekan  are  hard  to  trap ;  but  they  are  always  at  run  where  the 
trapper  is  hunting  the  rare  furs,  and  for  that  reason  are  usually 
snared  at  the  same  time  as  mink  and  otter. 


310  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

IV 

Wapistan  the  Marten 

When  Koot  went  blind  on  his  way  home  from  the  rabbit-hunt, 
he  had  intended  to  set  out  for  the  pine  woods.  Though  blizzards 
still  howl  over  the  prairie,  by  March  the  warm  sun  of  midday  has 
set  the  sap  of  the  forests  stirring  and  all  the  woodland  life  awakens 
from  its  long  winter  sleep.  Cougar  and  lynx  and  bear  rove  through 
the  forests,  ravenous  with  spring  hunger.  Otter,  too,  may  be  found 
where  the  ice  mounds  of  a  waterfall  are  beginning  to  thaw.  But  it 
is  not  any  of  these  that  the  trapper  seeks.  If  they  cross  his  path, 
good  —  they,  too,  will  swell  his  account  at  the  fur  post.  It  is 
another  of  the  little  chaps  that  he  seeks,  a  little,  long,  low-set  animal 
whose  fur  is  now  glistening  bright  on  the  deep  dark  overhairs,  soft 
as  down  in  the  thick  fawn  underhairs,  wapistan  the  marten. 

When  the  forest  begins  to  stir  with  the  coming  of  spring,  wapistan 
stirs  too,  crawling  out  from  the  hollow  of  some  rotten  pine  log, 
restless  with  the  same  blood-thirst  that  set  the  little  mink  playing 
his  tricks  on  the  hawk.  And  yet  the  marten  is  not  such  a  little 
viper  as  the  mink.  Wapistan  will  eat  leaves  and  nuts  and  roots 
if  he  can  get  vegetable  food,  but  failing  these,  that  ravenous  spring 
hunger  of  his  must  be  appeased  with  something  else.  And  out 
he  goes  from  his  log  hole  hunger-bold  as  the  biggest  of  all  other 
spring  ravagers.  That  boldness  gives  the  trapper  his  chance  at 
the  very  time  when  wapistan's  fur  is  best.  All  winter  the  trapper 
may  have  taken  marten ;  but  the  end  of  winter  is  the  time  when 
wapistan  wanders  freely  from  cover.  Thus  the  trapper's  calendar 
would  have  months  of  muskrat  first,  then  beaver  and  mink  and 
pekan  and  bear  and  fox  and  ermine  and  rabbit  and  lynx  and  marten, 
with  a  long  idle  midsummer  space  when  he  goes  to  the  fort  for  the 
year's  provisions  and  gathers  the  lore  of  his  craft. 

Wapistan  is  not  hard  to  track.  Being  much  longer  and  heavier 
than  a  cat,  with  very  short  legs  and  small  feet,  his  body  almost 
drags  the  ground  and  his  tracks  sink  deep,  clear,  and  sharp.     His 


THE   RARE   FURS  311 

feet  are  smaller  than  otter's  and  mink's,  but  easily  distinguishable 
from  those  two  fishers.  The  water  animal  leaves  a  spreading  foot- 
print, the  mark  of  the  webbed  toes  without  any  fur  on  the  padding 
of  the  toe-balls.  The  land  animal  of  the  same  size  has  clear  cut, 
narrower,  heavier  marks.  By  March,  these  dotting  foot-tracks 
thread  the  snow  everywhere. 

Coming  on  marten  tracks  at  a  pine  log,  the  trapper  sends  in 
his  dog  or  prods  with  a  stick.  Finding  nothing,  he  baits  a  steel- 
trap  with  pomatum,  covers  it  deftly  with  snow,  drags  the  decoy 
skin  about  to  conceal  his  own  tracks,  and  goes  away  in  the  hope 
that  the  marten  will  come  back  to  this  log  to  guzzle  on  his  prey 
and  sleep. 

If  the  track  is  much  frequented,  or  the  forest  overrun  with 
marten  tracks,  the  trapper  builds  deadfalls,  many  of  them  running 
from  tree  to  tree  for  miles  through  the  forest  in  a  circle  whose  circuit 
brings  him  back  to  his  cabin.  Remnants  of  these  log  traps  may  be 
seen  through  all  parts  of  the  Rocky  Mountain  forests.  Thirty 
to  forty  traps  are  considered  a  day's  work  for  one  man,  six  or  ten 
marten  all  that  he  expects  to  take  in  one  season ;  but  when  marten 
are  plentiful,  the  unused  traps  of  to-day  may  bring  prize  to-morrow. 

The  Indian  trapper  would  use  still  another  kind  of  trap.  Where 
the  tracks  are  plainly  frequently  used  runways  to  watering-places 
or  lair  in  hollow  tree,  the  Indian  digs  a  pit  across  the  marten's  trail. 
On  this  he  spreads  brush  in  such  roof  fashion  that  though  the  marten 
is  a  good  climber,  if  once  he  falls  in,  it  is  almost  impossible  for  him  to 
scramble  out.  If  a  poor  cackling  grouse  or  "fool-hen"  be  thrust 
into  the  pit,  the  Indian  is  almost  sure  to  find  a  prisoner.  This 
seems  to  the  white  man  a  barbarous  kind  of  trapping ;  but  the  poor 
"fool-hen,"  hunted  by  all  the  creatures  of  the  forest,  never  seems  to 
learn  wisdom,  but  invites  disaster  by  popping  out  of  the  brush  to 
stare  at  every  living  thing  that  passes.  If  she  did  not  fall  a  victim 
in  the  pit,  she  certainly  would  to  her  own  curiosity  above  ground. 
To  the  steel-trap  the  hunter  attaches  a  piece  of  log  to  entangle  the 
prisoner's  flight  as  he  rushes  through  the  underbrush.     Once  caught 


312  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

in  the  steel  jaws,  little  wapistan  must  wait  —  wait  for  what  ?  For 
the  same  thing  that  comes  to  the  poor  "fool-hen"  when  wapistan 
goes  Crashing  through  the  brush  after  her ;  for  the  same  thing  that 
comes  to  the  baby  squirrels  when  wapistan  climbs  a  tree  to  rob  the 
squirrel's  nest,  eat  the  young,  and  live  in  the  rifled  house ;  for  the 
same  thing  that  comes  to  the  hoary  marmot  whistling  his  spring 
tune  just  outside  his  rocky  den  when  wapistan,  who  has  climbed  up, 
pounces  down  from  above.  Little  death-dealer  he  has  been  all  his 
life  ;  and  now  death  comes  to  him  for  a  nobler  cause  than  the  stuffing 
of  a  greedy  maw  —  for  the  clothing  of  a  creature  nobler  than  him- 
self —  man. 

The  otter  can  protect  himself  by  diving,  even  diving  under 
snow.  The  mink  has  craft  to  hide  himself  under  leaves  so  that  the 
sharpest  eyes  cannot  detect  him.  Both  mink  and  otter  furs 
have  very  little  of  that  animal  smell  which  enables  the  foragers  to 
follow  their  trail.  What  gift  has  wapistan,  the  marten,  to  protect 
himself  against  all  the  powers  that  prey  ?  His  strength  and  his 
wisdom  lie  in  the  little  stubby  feet.     These  can  climb. 

A  trapper's  dog  had  stumbled  on  a  marten  in  a  stump  hole.  A 
snap  of  the  marten's  teeth  sent  the  dog  back  with  a  jump.  Wapis- 
tan will  hang  on  to  the  nose  of  a  dog  to  the  death ;  and  trappers' 
dogs  grow  cautious.  Before  the  dog  gathered  courage  to  make 
another  rush,  the  marten  escaped  by  a  rear  knot-hole,  getting  the 
start  of  his  enemy  by  fifty  yards.  Off  they  raced,  the  dog  spending 
himself  in  fury,  the  marten  keeping  under  the  thorny  brush  where 
his  enemy  could  not  follow,  then  across  open  snow  where  the  dog 
gained,  then  into  the  pine  woods  where  the  trail  ended  on  the  snow. 
Where  had  the  fugitive  gone .''  When  the  man  came  up,  he  first 
searched  for  log  holes.  There  were  none.  Then  he  lifted  some  of 
the  rocks.  There  was  no  trace  of  wapistan.  But  the  dog  kept 
baying  a  special  tree,  a  blasted  trunk,  bare  as  a  mast  pole  and 
seemingly  impossible  for  any  animal  but  a  squirrel  to  climb.  Know- 
ing the  trick  by  which  creatures  like  the  bob-cat  can  flatten  their 
body  into  a  resemblance  of  a  tree  trunk,  the  trapper  searched  care- 


THE   RARE   FURS  313 

fully  all  round  the  bare  trunk.  It  was  not  till  many  months  after- 
ward when  a  wind  storm  had  broken  the  tree  that  he  discovered 
the  upper  part  had  been  hollow.  Into  this  eerie  nook  the  pursued 
marten  had  scrambled  and  waited  in  safety  till  dog  and  man  retired. 

In  one  of  his  traps  the  man  finds  a  peculiarly  short  specimen  of 
the  marten.  In  the  vernacular  of  the  craft  this  marten's  bushy  tail 
will  not  reach  as  far  back  as  his  hind  legs  can  stretch.  Widely 
different  from  the  mink's  scarcely  visible  ears,  this  fellow's  ears 
are  sharply  upright,  keenly  alert.  He  is  like  a  fox,  where  the 
mink  resembles  a  furred  serpent.  Marten  moves,  springs,  jumps 
like  an  animal.  Mink  glides  like  a  snake.  Marten  has  the  strong 
neck  of  an  animal  fighter.  Mink  has  the  long,  thin,  twisting  neck 
which  reptiles  need  to  give  them  striking  power  for  their  fangs. 
Mink's  under  lip  has  a  mere  rim  of  white  or  yellow.  Marten's 
breast  is  patched  sulphur.  But  this  short  marten  with  a  tail  shorter 
than  other  marten  differs  from  his  kind  as  to  fur.  Both  mink  and 
marten  fur  are  reddish  brown ;  but  this  short  marten's  fur  is  almost 
black,  of  great  depth,  of  great  thickness,  and  of  three  qualities  : 
(i)  There  are  the  long  dark  overhairs  the  same  as  the  ordinary 
marten,  only  darker,  thicker,  deeper;  (2)  there  is  the  soft  under 
fur  of  the  ordinary  marten,  usually  fawn,' in  this  fellow  deep  brown  ; 
(3)  there  is  the  skin  fur  resembling  chicken-down,  of  which  this 
little  marten  has  such  a  wealth  —  to  use  a  technical  expression  — 
you  cannot  find  his  scalp.  Without  going  into  the  old  quarrel 
about  species,  when  a  marten  has  these  peculiarities,  he  is  known 
to  the  trapper  as  sable. 

Whether  he  is  the  American  counterpart  to  the  Russia  sable 
is  a  disputed  point.  Whether  his  superior  qualities  are  owing  to 
age,  climate,  species,  it  is  enough  for  the  trapper  to  know  that  short, 
dark  marten  yields  the  trade  —  sable. 


CHAPTER  X 
UNDER  THE  NORTH  STAR  — WHERE  FOX  AND   ERMINE  RUN 


Of  Foxes y  Many  and  Various  —  Red^  Cross,  Silver,  Black, 
Prairie,  Kit  or  Swift,  Arctic,  Blue,  and  Gray 

Wherever  grouse  and  rabbit  abound,  there  will  foxes  run  and 
there  will  the  hunter  set  steel-traps.  But  however  beautiful  a 
fox-skin  may  be  as  a  specimen,  it  has  value  as  a  fur  only  when  it 
belongs  to  one  of  three  varieties  —  Arctic,  black,  and  silver.  Other 
foxes  —  red,  cross,  prairie,  swift,  and  gray  —  the  trapper  will  take 
when  they  cross  his  path  and  sell  them  in  the  gross  at  the  fur  post, 
as  he  used  to  barter  buffalo-hides.  But  the  hunter  who  traps  the 
fox  for  its  own  sake,  and  not  as  an  uncalculated  extra  to  the  mink- 
hunt  or  the  beaver  total,  must  go  to  the  Far  North,  to  the  land  of 
winter  night  and  midnight  sun,  to  obtain  the  best  fox-skins. 

It  matters  not  to  the  trapper  that  the  little  kit  fox  or  swift  at  run 
among  the  hills  between  the  Missouri  and  Saskatchewan  is  the  most 
shapely  of  all  the  fox  kind,  with  as  finely  pointed  a  nose  as  a  spitz 
dog,  ears  alert  as  a  terrier's,  and  a  brush,  more  like  a  lady's  gray 
feather  boa  than  fur,  curled  round  his  dainty  toes.  Little  kit's 
fur  is  a  grizzled  gray  shading  to  mottled  fawn.  The  hairs  are 
coarse,  horsey,  indistinctly  marked,  and  the  fur  is  of  small  value 
to  the  trader;  so  dainty  little  swift,  who  looks  as  If  nature  made 
him  for  a  pet  dog  instead  of  a  fox,  Is  slighted  by  the  hunter,  unless 
kit  persists  in  tempting  a  trap.  Rufus  the  red  fellow,  with  his 
grizzled  gray  head  and  black  ears  and  whitish  throat  and  flaunting 

314 


UNDER  THE  NORTH   STAR  315 

purplish  tinges  down  his  sides  like  a  prince  royal,  may  make  a  hand- 
some fur  which  has  lately  become  a  craze.  His  cousin  with  the 
black  fore  feet,  the  prairie  fox,  who  is  the  largest  and  strongest 
and  scientifically  finest  of  all  his  kind,  has  more  value  as  a  fur.  The 
color  of  the  prairie  fox  shades  rather  to  pale  ochre  and  yellow 
than  the  nondescript  grizzled  gray  that  is  of  so  little  value  as  a  fur. 
Of  the  silver-gray  fox  little  need  be  said.  He  lives  too  far  south  — 
California  and  Texas  and  Mexico  —  to  acquire  either  energy  or  gloss. 
He  is  the  one  indolent  member  of  the  fox  tribe,  and  his  fur  lacks 
the  sheen  that  only  winter  cold  can  give.  The  value  of  the  cross 
fox  depends  on  the  markings  that  give  him  his  name.  If  the  bands, 
running  diagonally  over  his  shoulders  in  the  shape  of  a  cross,  shade 
to  grayish  blue  he  is  a  prize,  if  to  reddish  russet  he  is  only  a  curiosity 
to  be  dyed. 

The  Arctic  and  black  and  silver  foxes  have  the  pelts  that  at  their 
worst  equal  the  other  rare  furs,  at  their  best  exceed  the  value  of  all 
other  furs  by  so  much  that  the  lucky  trapper  who  takes  a  silver 
fox  has  made .  his  fortune.  These,  then,  are  the  foxes  that  the 
trapper  seeks  and  these  are  to  be  found  only  on  the  white  wastes 
of  the  polar  zone. 

That  brings  up  the  question  —  what  is  a  silver  fox  ?  Strange 
as  it  may  seem,  neither  scientist  nor  hunter  can  answer  the  question. 
Nor  will  study  of  all  the  park  specimens  in  the  world  tell  the  secret, 
for  the  simple  reason  that  only  an  Arctic  climate  can  produce  a  silver 
fox ;  and  parks  are  not  established  in  the  Arctics  yet.  It  is  quite 
plain  that  the  prairie  fox  is  in  a  class  by  himself.  The  uniformity  of 
his  size,  his  strength,  his  habits,  his  appearance,  distinguish  him  from 
other  foxes.  It  is  quite  plain  that  the  little  kit  fox  or  swift  is  of  a 
kind  distinct  from  other  foxes.  His  smallness,  the  shape  of  his  bones, 
the  cast  of  his  face,  the  trick  of  sitting  rather  than  lying,  that  won- 
derful big  bushy  soft  tail  of  which  a  peacock  might  be  vain — all  differ- 
entiate him  from  other  foxes.  The  same  may  be  said  of  the  Arctic  fox 
with  a  pelt  that  is  more  like  white  wool  than  hairs  of  fur.  He  is  much 
smaller  than  the  red.    His  tail  is  bushier  and  larger  than  the  swift,  and 


3i6  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

like  all  Arctic  creatures,  he  has  the  soles  of  his  feet  heavily  furred. 
All  this  is  plain  and  simple  classification.  But  how  about  Mr.  Blue 
Fox  of  the  same  size  and  habit  as  the  white  Arctic  ?  Is  he  the  Arctic 
fox  in  summer  clothing  ?  Yes,  say  some  trappers ;  and  they  show 
their  pelts  of  an  Arctic  fox  taken  in  summer  of  a  rusty  white.  But 
no,  vow  other  trappers  —  that  is  impossible,  for  here  are  blue  fox- 
skins  captured  in  the  depths  of  midwinter  with  not  a  white  hair 
among  them.  Look  closely  at  the  skins.  The  ears  of  one  blue 
fox  are  long,  perfect,  unbitten  by  frost  or  foe  —  he  was  a  young 
fellow ;  and  he  is  blue.  Here  is  another  with  ears  almost  worn  to 
stubs  by  fights  and  many  winters'  frosts  —  he  is  an  old  fellow ;  and 
he,  too,  is  blue.  Well,  then,  the  blue  fox  may  sometimes  be  the 
white  Arctic  fox  in  summer  dress ;  but  the  blue  fox  who  is  blue  all 
the  year  round,  varying  only  in  the  shades  of  blue  with  the  seasons, 
is  certainly  not  the  white  Arctic  fox. 

The  same  difficulty  besets  distinction  of  silver  fox  from  black. 
The  old  scientists  classified  these  as  one  and  the  same  creature. 
Trappers  know  better.  So  do  the  later  scientists  who  almost  agree 
with  the  unlearned  trapper's  verdict  —  there  are  as  many  species 
as  there  are  foxes.  Black  fox  is  at  its  best  in  midwinter,  deep, 
brilliantly  glossy,  soft  as  floss,  and  yet  almost  impenetrable  —  the 
very  type  of  perfection  of  its  kind.  But  with  the  coming  of  the 
tardy  Arctic  spring  comes  a  change.  The  snows  are  barely  melted 
in  May  when  the  sheen  leaves  the  fur.  By  June,  the  black  hairs 
are  streaked  with  gray ;  and  the  black  fox  is  a  gray  fox.  Is  it  at 
some  period  of  the  transition  that  the  black  fox  becomes  a  silver 
fox,  with  the  gray  hairs  as  sheeny  as  the  black  and  each  gray  hair 
delicately  tipped  with  black  ?  That  question,  too,  remains  un- 
answered ;  for  certainly  the  black  fox  trapped  when  in  his  gray 
summer  coat  is  not  the  splendid  silver  fox  of  priceless  value.  Black 
fox  turning  to  a  dull  gray  of  midsummer  may  not  be  silver  fox ;  but 
what  about  gray  fox  turning  to  the  beautiful  glossy  black  of  mid- 
winter.'' Is  that  what  makes  silver  fox.f*  Is  silver  fox  simply  a 
fine  specimen  of  black  caught  at  the  very  period  when  he  is  blooming 


UNDER  THE  NORTH  STAR  317 

into  his  greatest  beauty?  The  distinctive  difference  between 
gray  fox  and  silver  is  that  gray  fox  has  gray  hairs  among  hairs  of 
other  color,  while  silver  fox  has  silver  hair  tipped  with  glossiest 
black  on  a  foundation  of  downy  gray  black. 

Even  greater  confusion  surrounds  the  origin  of  cross  and  red 
and  gray.  Trappers  find  all  these  different  cubs  in  one  burrow; 
but  as  the  cubs  grow,  those  pronounced  cross  turn  out  to  be  red, 
or  the  red  becomes  cross ;  and  what  they  become  at  maturity,  that 
they  remain,  varying  only  with  the  seasons.^  It  takes  many  cen- 
turies to  make  one  perfect  rose.  Is  it  the  same  with  the  silver  fox  f 
Is  he  a  freak  or  a  climax  or  the  regular  product  of  yearly  climatic 
changes  caught  in  the  nick  of  time  by  some  lucky  trapper  ^  Ask 
the  scientist  that  question,  and  he  theorizes.  Ask  the  trapper, 
and  he  tells  you  if  he  could  only  catch  enough  silver  foxes  to  study 
that  question,  he  would  quit  trapping.  In  all  the  maze  of  ignorance 
and  speculation,  there  is  one  anchored  fact.  While  animals  turn  a 
grizzled  gray  with  age,  the  fine  gray  coats  are  not  caused  by  age. 
Young  animals  of  the  rarest  furs  —  fox  and  ermine  —  are  born  in 
ashy  color  that  turns  to  gray  while  they  are  still  in  their  first  nest. 

To  say  that  silver  fox  is  costly  solely  because  it  is  rare  is  sheerest 
nonsense.  It  would  be  just  as  sensible  to  say  that  labradorite,  which 
is  rare,  should  be  as  costly  as  diamonds.  It  is  the  intrinsic  beauty 
of  the  fur,  as  of  the  diamonds,  that  constitutes  its  first  value.  The 
facts  that  the  taking  of  a  silver  fox  is  always  pure  luck,  that  the 
luck  comes  seldom,  that  the  trapper  must  have  travelled  countless 
leagues  by  snow-shoe  and  dog  train  over  the  white  wastes  of  the 
North,  that  trappers  in  polar  regions  are  exposed  to  more  dangers 
and  hardships  than  elsewhere  and  that  the  fur  must  have  been 
carried  a  long  distance  to  market  —  add  to  the  first  high  value  of 
silver  fox  till  it  is  not  surprising  that  little  pelts  barely  two  feet 
long  have  sold  for  prices  ranging  from  ^500  to  $2000.  For  the 
trapper  the  way  to  the  fortune  of  a  silver  fox  is  the  same  as  the  road 
to  fortune  for  all  other  men  —  by  the  homely  trail  of  every-day 

1  That  is,  as  far  as  trappers  yet  know. 


3i8  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

work.  Cheers  from  the  fort  gates  bid  trappers  setting  out  for  far 
northern  fields  God-speed.  Long  ago  there  would  have  been  a 
firing  of  cannon  when  the  northern  hunters  left  for  their  distant 
camping-grounds ;  but  the  cannon  of  Churchill  lie  rusting  to-day 
and  the  hunters  who  go  to  the  sub-Arctics  and  the  Arctics  no  longer 
set  out  from  Churchill  on  the  bay,  but  from  one  of  the  little  inland 
MacKenzie  River  posts.  If  the  fine  powdery  snow-drifts  are 
glossed  with  the  ice  of  unbroken  sun-glare,  the  runners  strap  iron 
crampets  to  their  snow-shoes,  and  with  a  great  jingling  of  the  dog- 
bells,  barking  of  the  huskies,  and  yelling  of  the  drivers,  coast  away 
for  the  leagueless  levels  of  the  desolate  North.  Frozen  river-beds 
are  the  only  path  followed,  for  the  high  cliffs  —  almost  like  ram- 
parts on  the  lower  MacKenzie  —  shut  oflF  the  drifting  east  winds 
that  heap  barricades  of  snow  in  one  place  and  at  another  sweep 
the  ground  so  clear  that  the  sleighs  pull  heavy  as  stone.  Does  a 
husky  fag .''  A  flourish  of  whips  and  off  the  laggard  scampers, 
keeping  pace  with  the  others  in  the  traces,  a  pace  that  is  set  for 
forty  miles  a  day  with  only  one  feeding  time,  nightfall  when  the 
sleighs  are  piled  as  a  wind-break  and  the  frozen  fish  are  doled  out  to 
the  ravenous  dogs.  Gun  signals  herald  the  hunter's  approach  to  a 
chance  camp ;  and  no  matter  how  small  and  mean  the  tepee,  the 
door  is  always  open  for  whatever  visitor,  the  meat  pot  set  simmer- 
ing for  hungry  travellers.  When  the  snow  crust  cuts  the  dog's 
feet,  buckskin  shoes  are  tied  on  the  huskies ;  and  when  an  occa- 
sional dog  fags  entirely,  he  is  turned  adrift  from  the  traces  to  die. 
Relentless  as  death  is  northern  cold ;  and  wherever  these  long  mid- 
winter journeys  are  made,  gruesome  traditions  are  current  of  hunter 
and  husky. 

I  remember  hearing  of  one  old  husky  that  fell  hopelessly  lame 
during  the  north  trip.  Often  the  drivers  are  utter  brutes  to  their 
dogs,  speaking  in  curses  which  they  say  is  the  only  language  a  husky 
can  understand,  emphasized  with  the  blows  of  a  club.  Too  often, 
as  well,  the  huskies  are  vicious  curs  ready  to  skulk  or  snap  or  bolt  or 
fight,  anything  but  work.     But  in  this  case  the  dog  was  an  old 


UNDER  THE  NORTH  STAR  319 

reliable  that  kept  the  whole  train  in  line,  and  the  driver  had  such  an 
affection  for  the  veteran  husky  that  when  rheumatism  crippled 
the  dog's  legs  the  man  had  not  the  heart  to  shoot  such  a  faithful 
servant.  The  dog  was  turned  loose  from  the  traces  and  hobbled 
lamely  behind  the  scampering  teams.  At  last  he  fell  behind  al- 
together, but  at  night  limped  into  camp  whining  his  joy  and  asking 
dumbly  for  the  usual  fish.  In  the  morning  when  the  other  teams 
set  out,  the  old  husky  was  powerless  to  follow.  But  he  could  still 
whine  and  wag  his  tail.  He  did  both  with  all  his  might,  so  that 
when  the  departing  driver  looked  back  over  his  shoulder,  he  saw  a 
pair  of  eyes  pleading,  a  head  with  raised  alert  ears,  shoulders  strain- 
ing to  lift  legs  that  refused  to  follow,  and  a  bushy  tail  thwacking  — 
thwacking  —  thwacking  the  snow  ! 

"You  ought  to  shoot  him,"  advised  one  driver. 

"You  do  it  —  you're  a  dead  sure  aim,"  returned  the  man  who 
had  owned  the  dog. 

But  the  other  drivers  were  already  coasting  over  the  white 
wastes.  The  owner  looked  at  his  sleighs  as  if  wondering  whether 
they  would  stand  an  additional  burden.  Then  probably  reflecting 
that  old  age  is  not  desirable  for  a  suffering  dog  in  a  bitingly  keen 
frost,  he  turned  towards  the  husky  with  his  hand  in  his  belt. 
Thwack  —  thwack  went  the  tail  as  much  as  to  say:  "Of  course 
he  wouldn't  desert  me  after  I've  hauled  his  sleigh  all  my  life  ! 
Thwack  —  thwack !  I'd  get  up  and  jump  all  around  him  if  I 
could ;  there  isn't  a  dog-gone  husky  in  all  polar  land  with  half  as 
good  a  master  as  I  have !" 

The  man  stopped.  Instead  of  going  to  the  dog  he  ran  back  to 
his  sleigh,  loaded  his  arms  full  of  frozen  fish  and  threw  them  down 
before  the  dog.  Then  he  put  one  caribou-skin  under  the  old  dog, 
spread  another  over  him  and  ran  away  with  his  train  while  the 
husky  was  still  guzzling.  The  fish  had  been  poisoned  to  be  thrown 
out  to  the  wolves  that  so  often  pursue  northern  dog  trains. 

Once  a  party  of  hunters  crossing  the  Northern  Rockies  came  on 
a  dog  train  stark  and  stiff.     Where  was  the  master  who  had  bidden 


320  THE  FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

them  stand  while  he  felt  his  way  blindly  through  the  white  whirl  of  a 
blizzard  for  the  lost  path  ?  In  the  middle  of  the  last  century,  one 
of  that  famous  family  of  fur  traders,  a  MacKenzie,  left  Georgetown 
to  go  north  to  Red  River  in  Canada.  He  never  went  back  to 
Georgetown  and  he  never  reached  Red  River ;  but  his  coat  was 
found  fluttering  from  a  tree,  a  death  signal  to  attract  the  first 
passer-by,  and  the  body  of  the  lost  trader  was  discovered  not  far 
off  in  the  snow.  Unless  it  is  the  year  of  the  rabbit  pest  and  the 
rabbit  ravagers  are  bold  with  hunger,  the  pursuing  wolves  seldom 
give  full  chase.  They  skulk  far  to  the  rear  of  the  dog  trains,  lick- 
ing up  the  stains  of  the  bleeding  feet,  or  hanging  spectrally  on  the 
dim  frosty  horizon  all  night  long.  Hunger  drives  them  on ;  but 
they  seem  to  lack  the  courage  to  attack.  I  know  of  one  case  where 
the  wolves  followed  the  dog  trains  bringing  out  a  trader's  family 
from  the  North  down  the  river-bed  for  nearly  five  hundred  miles. 
What  man  hunter  would  follow  so  far  ? 

The  farther  north  the  fox  hunter  goes,  the  shorter  grow  the 
days,  till  at  last  the  sun,  which  has  rolled  down  in  a  wheel  of  fire, 
dwindles  to  a  disc,  the  disc  to  a  rim  —  then  no  rim  at  all  comes  up, 
and  It  is  midwinter  night,  night  but  not  darkness.  The  white  of 
endless  unbroken  snow,  the  glint  of  icy  particles  filling  the  air,  the 
starlight  brilliant  as  diamond  points,  the  Aurora  Borealis  in  curtains 
and  shafts  and  billows  of  tenuous  impalpable  rose-colored  fire  — 
all  brighten  the  polar  night  so  that  the  sun  is  unmissed.  This  is 
the  region  chiefly  hunted  by  the  Eskimo,  with  a  few  white  men  and 
Chippewyan  half-breeds.  The  regular  Northern  hunters  do  not 
go  as  far  as  the  Arctics,  but  choose  their  hunting-ground  somewhere 
in  the  region  of  "little  sticks,"  meaning  the  land  where  timber 
growth  is  succeeded  by  dwarf  scrubs. 

The  hunting-ground  is  chosen  always  from  the  signs  written 
across  the  white  page  of  the  snow.  If  there  are  claw-marks,  bird 
signs  of  northern  grouse  or  white  ptarmigan  or  snow-bunting, 
ermine  will  be  plentiful ;  for  the  northern  birds  with  their  clogged 
stockings  of  feet  feathers  have  a  habit  of  floundering  under  the 


UNDER  THE  NORTH   STAR  321 

powdery  snow ;  and  up  through  that  powdery  snow  darts  the  snaky 
neck  of  stoat,  the  white  weasel-hunter  of  birds.  If  there  are  the 
deep  plunges  of  the  white  hare,  lynx  and  fox  and  mink  and  marten 
and  pekan  will  be  plentiful ;  for  the  poor  white  hare  feeds  all  the 
creatures  of  the  northern  wastes,  man  and  beast.  If  there  are 
little  dainty  tracks  —  oh,  such  dainty  tracks  that  none  but  a  high- 
stepping,  clear-cut,  clean-limbed,  little  thoroughbred  could  make 
them !  —  tracks  of  four  toes  and  a  thumb  claw  much  shorter  than 
the  rest,  with  a  padding  of  five  basal  foot-bones  behind  the  toes, 
tracks  that  show  a  fluff  on  the  snow  as  of  furred  foot-soles,  tracks 
that  go  in  clean,  neat,  clear  long  leaps  and  bounds  —  the  hunter 
knows  that  he  has  found  the  signs  of  the  northern  fox. 

Here,  then,  he  will  camp  for  the  winter.  Camping  in  the  Far 
North  means  something  different  from  the  hastily  pitched  tent  of 
the  prairie.  The  north  wind  blows  biting,  keen,  unbroken  in  its 
sweep.  The  hunter  must  camp  where  that  wind  will  not  carry 
scent  of  his  tent  to  the  animal  world.  For  his  own  sake,  he  must 
camp  under  shelter  from  that  wind,  behind  a  cairn  of  stones,  below 
a  cliff,  in  a  ravine.  Poles  have  been  brought  from  the  land  of  trees 
on  the  dog  sleigh.  These  are  put  up,  criss-crossed  at  top,  and  over 
them  is  laid,  not  the  canvas  tent,  but  a  tent  of  skins,  caribou,  wolf, 
moose,  at  a  sharp  enough  angle  to  let  the  snow  slide  off.  Then 
snow  is  banked  deep,  completely  round  the  tent.  For  fire,  the 
Eskimo  depends  on  whale-oil  and  animal  grease.  The  white  man  or 
half-breed  from  the  South  hoards  up  chips  and  sticks.  But  mainly 
he  depends  on  exercise  and  animal  food  for  warmth.  At  night  he 
sleeps  in  a  fur  bag.  In  the  morning  that  bag  is  frozen  stiff  as  boards 
by  the  moisture  of  his  own  breath.  Need  one  ask  why  the  rarest  furs, 
which  can  only  be  produced  by  the  coldest  of  climates,  are  so  costly  f 

Having  found  the  tracks  of  the  fox,  the  hunter  sets  out  his  traps 
baited  with  fish  or  rabbit  or  a  bird-head.  If  the  snow  be  powdery 
enough,  and  the  trapper  keen  in  wild  lore,  he  may  even  know  what 
sort  of  fox  to  expect.  In  the  depths  of  midwinter,  the  white 
Arctic  fox  has  a  wool  fur  to  his  feet  like  a  brahma  chicken.     This 


322  THE  FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

leaves  its  mark  in  the  fluffy  snow.  A  ravenous  fellow  he  always  is, 
this  white  fox  of  the  hungry  North,  bold  from  ignorance  of  man, 
but  hard  to  distinguish  from  the  snow  because  of  his  spotless  coat. 
The  blue  fox  being  slightly  smaller  than  the  full-grown  Arctic, 
lopes  along  with  shorter  leaps,  by  which  the  trapper  may  know  the 
quarry;  but  the  blue  fox  is  just  as  hard  to  distinguish  from  the 
snow  as  his  white  brother.  The  gray  frost  haze  is  almost  the  same 
shade  as  his  steel-blue  coat ;  and  when  spring  comes,  blue  fox  is  the 
same  color  as  the  tawny  moss  growth.  Color  is  blue  fox's  de- 
fence.    Consequently  blue  foxes  show  more  signs  of  age  than  white 

—  stubby  ears  frozen  low,  battle-worn  teeth,  dulled  claws. 

The  chances  are  that  the  trapper  will  see  the  black  fox  himself 
almost  as  soon  as  he  sees  his  tracks ;  for  the  sheeny  coat  that  is 
black  fox's  beauty  betrays  him  above  the  snow.  Bushy  tail  stand- 
ing straight  out,  every  black  hair  bristling  erect  with  life,  the  white 
tail-tip  flaunting  a  defiance,  head  up,  ears  alert,  fore  feet  cleaving 
the  air  with  the  swift  ease  of  some  airy  bird  —  on  he  comes,  jump 

—  jump  —  jump  —  more  of  a  leap  than  a  lope,  galloping  like  a 
wolf,  altogether  different  from  the  skulking  run  of  little  foxes, 
openly  exulting  in  his  beauty  and  his  strength  and  his  speed  !  There 
is  no  mistaking  black  fox.  If  the  trapper  does  not  see  the  black  fox 
scurrying  over  the  snow,  the  telltale  characteristics]  of  the  foot- 
prints are  the  length  and  strength  of  the  leaps.  Across  these  leaps 
the  hunter  leaves  his  traps.  Does  he  hope  for  a  silver  fox .''  Does 
every  prospector  expect  to  find  gold  nuggets  ?  In  the  heyday 
of  fur  company  prosperity,  not  half  a  dozen  true  silver  foxes  would 
be  sent  out  in  a  year.  But  good  white  fox  and  black  and  blue  are 
prizes  enough  in  themselves,  netting  as  much  to  the  trapper  as  mink 
or  beaver  or  sable. 

II 

The  White  Ermine 

All  that  was  said  of  the  mystery  of  fox  life  applies  equally  to 
ermine.     Why  is   the  ermine  of  Wisconsin   and   Minnesota   and 


UNDER  THE  NORTH  STAR  323 

Dakota  a  dirty  little  weasel  noted  for  killing  forty  chickens  in  a 
night,  wearing  a  mahogany-colored  coat  with  a  sulphur  strip 
down  his  throat,  while  the  ermine  of  the  Arctic  is  as  white  as  snow, 
noted  for  his  courage,  wearing  a  spotless  coat  which  kings  envy, 
yes,  and  take  from  him  ?  For  a  long  time  the  learned  men  who 
study  animal  life  from  museums  held  that  the  ermine's  coat 
turned  white  from  the  same  cause  as  human  hair,  from  senility  and 
debility  and  the  depleting  effect  of  an  intensely  trying  climate. 
But  the  trappers  told  a  different  story.  They  told  of  baby  ermine 
born  in  Arctic  burrows,  in  March,  April,  May,  June,  while  the 
mother  was  still  in  white  coat,  babies  born  in  an  ashy  coat  some- 
thing like  a  mouse-skin  that  turned  to  fleecy  white  within  ten  days. 
They  told  of  ermine  shedding  his  brown  coat  in  autumn  to  display  a 
fresh  layer  of  iron-gray  fur  that  turned  sulphur  white  within  a  few 
days.  They  told  of  the  youngest  and  smallest  and  strongest  ermine 
with  the  softest  and  whitest  coats.  That  disposed  of  the  senility 
theory.  All  the  trapper  knows  is  that  the  whitest  ermine  is  taken 
when  the  cold  is  most  intense  and  most  continuous,  that  just  as 
the  cold  slackens  the  ermine  coat  assumes  the  sulphur  tinges,  deepen- 
ing to  russet  and  brown,  and  that  the  whitest  ermine  instead  of 
showing  senility,  always  displays  the  most  active  and  courageous 
sort  of  deviltry. 

Summer  or  winter,  the  northern  trapper  is  constantly  surrounded 
by  ermine  and  signs  of  ermine.  There  are  the  tiny  claw-tracks 
almost  like  frost  tracery  across  the  snow.  There  is  the  rifled  nest 
of  a  poor  grouse  —  eggs  sucked,  or  chickens  murdered,  the  nest 
fouled  so  that  it  emits  the  stench  of  a  skunk,  or  the  mother  hen 
lying  dead  from  a  wound  in  her  throat.  There  is  the  frightened 
rabbit  loping  across  the  fields  in  the  wildest,  wobbliest,  most  woe- 
begone leaps,  trying  to  shake  something  off  that  is  clinging  to  his 
throat  till  over  he  tumbles  —  the  prey  of  a  hunter  that  is  barely 
the  size  of  rabbit's  paw.  There  is  the  water-rat  flitting  across  the 
rocks  in  blind  terror,  regardless  of  the  watching  trapper,  caring 
only  to  reach  safety  —  water  —  water !     Behind  comes  the  pursuer 


324  THE  FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

—  this  is  no  still  hunt  but  a  straight  open  chase  —  a  little  creature 
about  the  length  of  a  man's  hand,  with  a  tail  almost  as  long,  a  body- 
scarcely  the  thickness  of  two  fingers,  a  mouth  the  size  of  a  bird's 
beak,  and  claws  as  small  as  a  sparrow's.  It  gallops  in  lithe  bounds 
with  its  long  neck  straight  up  and  its  beady  eyes  fastened  on  the 
flying  water-rat.  Splash  —  dive  —  into  the  water  goes  the  rat ! 
Splash  —  dive  —  into  the  water  goes  the  ermine  !  There  is  a  great 
stirring  up  of  the  muddy  bottom.  The  water-rat  has  tried  to  hide 
in  the  under-tangle ;  and  the  ermine  has  not  only  dived  in  pursuit 
but  headed  the  water-rat  back  from  the  safe  retreat  of  his  house. 
Up  comes  a  black  nose  to  the  surface  of  the  water.  The  rat  is  fool- 
ishly going  to  try  a  land  race.  Up  comes  a  long  neck  like  a  snake's, 
the  head  erect,  the  beady  eyes  on  the  fleeing  water-rat  —  then  with  a 
splash  they  race  overland.  The  water-rat  makes  for  a  hole  among 
the  rocks.  Ermine  sees  and  with  a  spurt  of  speed  is  almost  abreast 
when  the  rat  at  bay  turns  with  a  snap  at  his  pursuer.  But  quick 
as  flash,  the  ermine  has  pirouetted  into  the  air.  The  long  writh- 
ing neck  strikes  like  a  serpent's  fangs  and  the  sharp  fore  teeth  have 
pierced  the  brain  of  the  rat.  The  victim  dies  without  a  cry,  without 
a  struggle,  without  a  pain.  That  long  neck  was  not  given  the 
ermine  for  nothing.  Neither  were  those  muscles  massed  on  either 
side  of  his  jaws  like  bulging  cheeks. 

In  winter  the  ermine's  murderous  depredations  are  more  apparent. 
Now  the  ermine,  too,  sets  itself  to  reading  the  signs  of  the  snow. 
Now  the  ermine  becomes  as  keen  a  still  hunter  as  the  man.  Some- 
times a  whirling  snow-fall  catches  a  family  of  grouse  out  from  furze 
cover.  The  trapper,  too,  is  abroad  in  the  snow-storm ;  for  that 
is  the  time  when  he  can  set  his  traps  undetected.  The  white  whirl 
confuses  the  birds.  They  run  here,  there,  everywhere,  circling 
about,  burying  themselves  in  the  snow  till  the  storm  passes  over. 
The  next  day  when  the  hunter  is  going  the  rounds  of  these  traps, 
along  comes  an  ermine.  It  does  not  see  him.  It  is  following  a 
scent,  head  down,  body  close  to  ground,  nose  here,  there,  thread- 
ing the  maze  which  the  crazy  grouse  had  run.     But  stop,  thinks 


UNDER  THE  NORTH   STAR  325 

the  trapper,  the  snow-fall  covered  the  trail.  Exactly  —  that  is 
why  the  little  ermine  dives  under  snow  just  as  it  would  under 
water,  running  along  with  serpentine  wavings  of  the  white 
powdery  surface  till  up  it  comes  again  where  the  wind  has  blown 
the  snow-fall  clear.  Along  it  runs,  still  intent,  quartering  back 
where  it  loses  the  scent  —  along  again  till  suddenly  the  head 
lifts  —  that  motion  of  the  snake  before  it  strikes !  The  trapper 
looks.  Tail  feathers,  head  feathers,  stupid  blinking  eyes  poke 
through  the  fluffy  snow-drift.  And  now  the  ermine  no  longer 
runs  openly.  There  are  too  many  victims  this  time  —  it  may  get 
all  the  foolish  hidden  grouse ;  so  it  dives  and  if  the  man  had  not 
alarmed  the  stupid  grouse,  ermine  would  have  darted  up  through 
the  snow  with  a  finishing  stab  for  each  bird. 

By  still  hunt  and  open  hunt,  by  nose  and  eye,  relentless  as  doom, 
it  follows  its  victims  to  the  death.  Does  the  bird  perch  on  a  tree  ? 
Up  goes  the  ermine,  too,  on  the  side  away  from  the  bird's  head. 
Does  the  mouse  thread  a  hundred  mazes  and  hide  in  a  hole  ?  The 
ermine  threads  every  maze,  marches  into  the  hidden  nest  and  takes 
murderous  possession.  Does  the  rat  hide  under  rock  ?  Under  the 
rock  goes  the  ermine.  Should  the  trapper  follow  to  see  the  out- 
come of  the  contest,  the  ermine  will  probably  sit  at  the  mouth  of  the 
rat-hole,  blinking  its  beady  eyes  at  him.  If  he  attacks,  down  it 
bolts  out  of  reach.  If  he  retires,  out  It  comes  looking  at  this  strange 
big  helpless  creature  with  bold  contempt. 

The  keen  scent,  the  keen  eyes,  the  keen  ears  warn  it  of  an  enemy's 
approach.  Summer  and  winter,  its  changing  coat  conceals  It.  The 
furze  where  It  runs  protects  it  from  fox  and  lynx  and  wolverine.  Its 
size  admits  it  to  the  tiniest  of  hiding-places.  All  that  the  ermine 
can  do  to  hunt  down  a  victim.  It  can  do  to  hide  from  an  enemy. 
These  qualities  make  it  almost  Invincible  to  other  beasts  of  the 
chase.  Two  joints  in  the  armor  of  Its  defence  has  the  little  ermine. 
Its  black  tail-tip  moving  across  snow  betrays  it  to  enemies  In  winter : 
the  very  intentness  on  prey,  its  excess  of  self-confidence,  leads  it 
into  danger ;  for  instance,  little  ermine  is  royally  contemptuous  of 


326  THE  FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

man's  tracks.  If  the  man  does  not  molest  it,  it  will  follow  a  scent 
and  quarter  and  circle  under  his  feet ;  so  the  man  has  no  difficulty 
in  taking  the  little  beast.  So  bold  are  the  little  creatures  that  the 
man  may  discover  their  burrows  under  brush,  in  rock,  in  sand 
holes,  and  take  the  whole  litter  before  the  game  mother  will 
attempt  to  escape.  Indeed,  the  plucky  little  ermine  will  follow 
the  captor  of  her  brood.  Steel  rat  traps,  tiny  deadfalls,  frosted 
bits  of  iron  smeared  with  grease  to  tempt  the  ermine's  tongue  which 
the  frost  will  hold  like  a  vice  till  the  trapper  comes,  and,  most 
common  of  all,  twine  snares  such  as  entrap  the  rabbit,  are  the  means 
by  which  the  ermine  comes  to  his  appointed  end  at  the  hands  of 
men. 

The  quality  of  the  pelt  shows  as  wide  variety  as  thc'  skin  of  the 
fox;  and  for  as  mysterious  reasons.  Why  an  ermine  a  year  old 
should  have  a  coat  like  sulphur  and  another  of  the  same  age  a  coat 
like  swan's  down,  neither  trapper  nor  scientist  has  yet  discovered. 
The  price  of  the  ermine-pelt  used  to  be  higher  than  any  other  of 
the  rare  furs  taken  in  North  America  except  silver  fox;  but  jt  no 
longer  commands  the  fabulous  prices  that  were  certainly  paid  for 
specimen  ermine-skins  in  the  days  of  the  Georges  in  England  and 
the  later  Louis  in  France.  How  were  those  fabulously  costly  skins 
prepared  J  Old  trappers  say  no  perfectly  downy  pelt  is  ever  taken 
from  an  ermine,  that  the  downy  effect  is  produced  by  a  trick  of  the 
trade  —  scraping  the  flesh  side  so  deftly  that  all  the  coarse  hairs 
will  fall  out,  leaving  only  the  soft  under-fur. 


CHAPTER  XI 
WHAT  THE  TRAPPER  STANDS  FOR 

Waging  ceaseless  war  against  beaver  and  moose,  types  of  na- 
ture's most  harmless  creatures,  against  wolf  and  wolverine,  types  of 
nature's  most  destructive  agents,  against  traders  who  were  rivals 
and  Indians  who  were  hostiles,  the  trapper  would  almost  seem  to  be 
himself  a  type  of  nature's  arch-destroyer. 

Beautiful  as  a  dream  is  the  silent  world  of  forest  and  prairie  and 
mountain  where  the  trapper  moves  with  noiseless  stealth  of  the 
most  skilful  of  all  the  creatures  that  prey.  In  that  world,  the 
crack  of  the  trapper's  rifle,  the  snap  of  the  cruel  steel  jaws  in  his 
trap,  seem  the  only  harsh  discords  in  the  harmony  of  an  existence 
that  riots  with  a  very  fulness  of  life.  But  such  a  world  is  only  a 
dream.  The  reality  is  cruel  as  death.  Of  all  the  creatures  that 
prey,  man  is  the  most  merciful. 

Ordinarily,  knowledge  of  animal  life  is  drawn  from  three  sources. 
There  are  park  specimens,  stufl^ed  to  the  utmost  of  their  eating 
capacity  and  penned  oif  from  the  possibility  of  harming  anything 
weaker  than  themselves.  There  are  the  private  pets  fed  equally 
well,  pampered  and  chained  safely  from  harming  or  being  harmed. 
There  are  the  wild  creatures  roaming  natural  haunts,  some  two  or 
three  days'  travel  from  civilization,  whose  natures  have  been 
gradually  modified  generation  by  generation  from  being  constantly 
hunted  with  long-range  repeaters.  Judging  from  these  sorts  of 
wild  animals,  it  certainly  seems  that  the  brute  creation  has  been 
sadly  maligned.  The  bear  cubs  lick  each  other's  paws  with  an 
amatory  singing  that  is  something  between  the  purr  of  a  cat  and  the 
grunt  of  a  pig.     The  old  polars  wrestle  like  boys  out  of  school, 

3*7 


328  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

flounder  in  grotesque  gambols  that  are  laughably  clumsy,  good- 
naturedly  dance  on  their  hind  legs,  and  even  eat  from  their  keepers' 
hand.  And  all  the  deer  family  can  be  seen  nosing  one  another 
with  the  affection  of  turtle-doves.  Surely  the  worst  that  can  be 
said  of  these  animals  is  that  they  shun  the  presence  of  man.  Per- 
haps some  kindly  sentimentalist  wonders  if  things  hadn't  gone  so 
badly  out  of  gear  in  a  certain  historic  garden  long  ago,  whether 
mankind  would  not  be  on  as  friendly  relations  with  the  animal 
world  as  little  boys  and  girls  are  with  bears  and  baboons  in  the 
fairy  books.  And  the  scientist  goes  a  step  further,  and  soberly 
asks  whether  these  wild  things  of  the  woods  are  not  kindred  of  man 
after  all ;  for  have  not  man  and  beast  ascended  the  same  scale  of 
life  ?  Across  the  centuries,  modern  evolution  shakes  hands  with 
old-fashioned  transmigration. 

To  be  sure,  members  of  the  deer  family  sometimes  kill  their 
mates  in  fits  of  bhnd  rage,  and  the  innocent  bear  cubs  fall  to  mauling 
their  keeper,  and  the  old  bears  have  been  known  to  eat  their  young. 
These  things  are  set  down  as  freaks  in  the  animal  world,  and  in 
nowise  allowed  to  upset  the  inferences  drawn  from  animals  living 
in  unnatural  surroundings,  behind  iron  bars,  or  in  haunts  where 
long-range  rifles  have  put  the  fear  of  man  in  the  animal  heart. 

Now  the  trapper  studies  animal  life  where  there  is  neither  a  pen  to 
keep  the  animal  from  doing  what  it  wants  to  do,  nor  any  rifle  but  his 
own  to  teach  wild  creatures  fear.  Knowing  nothing  of  science  and 
sentiment,  he  never  clips  facts  to  suit  his  theory.  On  the  truth- 
fulness of  his  eyes  depends  his  own  life,  so  that  he  never  blinks 
his  eyes  to  disagreeable  facts. 

Looking  out  on  the  life  of  the  wilds  clear-visioned  as  his  moun- 
tain air,  the  trapper  sees  a  world  beautiful  as  a  dream  but  cruel  as 
death.  He  sees  a  world  where  to  be  weak,  to  be  stupid,  to  be  dull, 
to  be  slow,  to  be  simple,  to  be  rash  are  the  unpardonable  crimes ; 
where  the  weak  must  grow  strong,  keen  of  eye  and  ear  and  instinct, 
sharp,  wary,  swift,  wise,  and  cautious ;  where  in  a  word  the  weak 
must  grow  fit  to  survive  or  —  perish  ! 


WHAT  THE  TRAPPER  STANDS   FOR         329 

The  slow  worm  fills  the  hungry  maw  of  the  gaping  bird.  Into 
the  soft  fur  of  the  rabbit  that  has  strayed  too  far  from  cover  clutch 
the  swooping  talons  of  an  eagle.  The  beaver  that  exposes  himself 
overland  risks  bringing  lynx  or  wolverine  or  wolf  on  his  home 
colony.  Bird  preys  on  worm,  mink  on  bird,  lynx  on  mink,  wolf 
on  lynx,  and  bear  on  all  creatures  that  live  from  men  and  moose 
down  to  the  ant  and  the  embryo  life  In  the  ant's  egg.  But  the 
vision  of  ravening  destruction  does  not  lead  the  trapper  to  morbid 
conclusions  on  life  as  it  leads  so  many  housed  thinkers  in  the  walled 
cities ;  for  the  same  world  that  reveals  to  him  such  ravening 
slaughter  shows  him  that  every  creature,  the  weakest  and  the 
strongest,  has  some  faculty,  some  instinct,  some  endowment  of 
cunning,  or  dexterity  or  caution,  some  gift  of  concealment,  of  flight, 
of  semblance,  of  death  —  that  will  defend  it  from  all  enemies. 
The  ermine  is  one  of  the  smallest  of  all  hunters,  but  it  can  throw 
an  enemy  off  the  scent  by  diving  under  snow.  The  rabbit  is  one 
of  the  most  helpless  of  all  hunted  things,  but  it  can  take  cover  from 
foes  of  the  air  under  thorny  brush,  and  run  fast  enough  to  outwind 
the  breath  of  a  pursuer,  and  double  back  quick  enough  to  send  a 
harrying  eagle  flopping  head  over  heels  on  the  ground,  and  simulate 
the  stillness  of  inanimate  objects  surrounding  it  so  truly  that  the 
passer-by  can  scarcely  distinguish  the  balls  of  fawn  fur  from  the 
russet  bark  of  a  log.  And  the  rabbit's  big  eyes  and  ears  are  not 
given  it  for  nothing. 

Poet  and  trapper  alike  see  the  same  world,  and  for  the  same 
reason.  Both  seek  only  to  know  the  truth,  to  see  the  world  as  it 
Is;  and  the  world  that  they  see  is  red  in  tooth  and  claw.  But 
neither  grows  morbid  from  his  vision ;  for  that  same  vision  shows 
each  that  the  ravening  destruction  is  only  a  weeding  out  of  the 
unfit.  There  is  too  much  sunlight  in  the  trapper's  world,  too 
much  fresh  air  in  his  lungs,  too  much  red  blood  in  his  veins  for  the 
morbid  miasmas  that  bring  bilious  fume  across  the  mental  vision 
of  the  housed  city  man. 

And  what  place  in  the  scale  of  destruction  does  the  trapper 


330  THE  FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

occupy  ?  Modern  sentiment  has  almost  painted  him  as  a  red- 
dyed  monster,  excusable,  perhaps,  because  necessity  compels  the 
hunter  to  slay,  but  after  all  only  the  most  highly  developed  of  the 
creatures  that  prey.  Is  this  true  ?  Arch-destroyer  he  may  be ; 
but  it  should  be  remembered  that  he  is  the  destroyer  of  destroyers. 

Animals  kill  young  and  old,  male  and  female. 

The  true  trapper  does  not  kill  the  young ;  for  that  would  destroy 
his  next  year's  hunt.  He  does  not  kill  the  mother  while  she  is  with 
the  young.  He  kills  the  grown  males  which  —  it  can  be  safely 
said  —  have  killed  more  of  each  other  than  man  has  killed  in  all  the 
history  of  trapping.  Wherever  regions  have  been  hunted  by  the 
pot-hunter,  whether  the  sportsman  for  amusement  or  the  settler 
supplying  his  larder,  game  has  been  exterminated.  This  is  illus- 
trated by  all  the  stretch  of  country  between  the  Platte  and  the 
Saskatchewan.  Wherever  regions  have  been  hunted  only  by  the 
trapper,  game  is  as  plentiful  as  it  has  ever  been.  This  is  illustrated 
by  the  forests  of  the  Rockies,  by  the  No-Man's  Land  south  of 
Hudson  Bay  and  by  the  Arctics.  Wherever  the  trapper  has  come 
destroying  grizzly  and  coyote  and  wolverine,  the  prong  horn  and 
mountain-sheep  and  mountain-goat  and  wapiti  and  moose  have 
increased. 

But  the  trapper  stands  for  something  more  than  a  game  warden, 
something  more  than  the  most  merciful  of  destroyers.  He  destroys 
animal  life  —  a  life  which  is  red  in  tooth  and  claw  with  murder  and 
rapine  and  cruelty  —  in  order  that  human  life  may  be  preserved, 
may  be  rendered  independent  of  the  elemental  powers  that  wage 
war  against  it. 

It  is  a  war  as  old  as  the  human  race,  this  struggle  of  man  against 
the  elements,  a  struggle  alike  reflected  in  Viking  song  of  warriors 
conquering  the  sea,  and  in  the  Scandinavian  myth  of  pursuing 
Fenris  wolf,  and  in  the  Finnish  epic  of  the  man-hero  wresting  secrets 
of  life-bread  from  the  earth,  and  in  Indian  folk;-lore  of  a  Hiawatha 
hunting  beast  and  treacherous  wind.  It  is  a  war  in  which  the 
trapper  stands  forth  as  a  conqueror,  a  creature  sprung  of  earth, 


WHAT  THE  TRAPPER  STANDS   FOR         331 

trampling  all  the  obstacles  that  earth  can  offer  to  human  will  under 
his  feet,  finding  paths  through  the  wilderness  for  the  explorer  who 
was  to  come  after  him,  opening  doors  of  escape  from  stifled  life 
in  crowded  centres  of  population,  preparing  a  highway  for  the 
civilization  that  was  to  follow  his  own  wandering  trail  through  the 
wilds. 


APPENDIX  TO  PART  II 

When  in  Labrador  and  Newfoundland  a  few  years  ago,  the  writer 
copied  the  entries  of  an  old  half-breed  woman  trapper's  daily  journal  of  her 
life.  It  is  fragmentary  and  incoherent,  but  gives  a  glimpse  of  the  Indian 
mind.  It  is  written  in  English.  She  was  seventy-five  years  old  when 
the  diary  opened  in  December,  1893.  Her  name  was  Lydia  Campbell 
and  she  lived  at  Hamilton  Inlet.  Having  related  how  she  shot  a  deer, 
skinning  it  herself,  made  her  snow-shoes  and  set  her  rabbit  snares,  she 
closes  her  first  entry  with  : 

"Well,  as  I  sed,  I  can't  write  much  at  a  time  now,  for  i  am  getting 
blind  and  some  mist  rises  up  before  me  if  i  sew,  read  or  write  a  little  while." 

Lydia  Campbell's  mother  was  captured  by  Eskimo.  She  ran  away 
when  she  had  grown  up,  to  quote  her  own  terse  diary,  "crossed  a  river  on 
drift  sticks,  wading  in  shadows,  through  woods,  meeting  bears,  sleeping 
under  trees  —  seventy  miles  flight  —  saw  a  French  boat  —  took  off  skirt 
and  waved  it  to  them  —  came  —  took  my  mother  on  board  —  worked  for 
them  —  with  the  sealers  —  camped  on  the  ice. 

"As  there  was  no  other  kind  of  women  to  marrie  hear,  the  few  English 
men  each  took  a  wife  of  that  sort  and  they  never  was  sorry  that  they  took 
them,  for  they  was  great  workers  and  so  it  came  to  pass  that  I  was  one  of 
the  youngest  of  them."  [Meaning,  of  course,  that  she  was  the  daughter 
of  one  of  these  marriages.] 

"Our  young  man  pretended  to  spark  the  two  dauhgters  of  Tomas. 
He  was  a  one-armed  man,  for  he  had  shot  away  one  arm  firing  at  a  large 
bird.  .  .  .  He  double-loaded  his  gun  in  his  fright,  so  the  por  man  lost 
one  of  his  armes,  ...  he  was  so  smart  with  his  gun  that  he  could  bring 
down  a  bird  flying  past  him,  or  a  deer  running  past  he  would  be  the  first 
to  bring  it  down." 

332 


APPENDIX  TO  PART  II  333 

"They  was  holden  me  hand  and  telling  me  that  I  must  be  his  mother 
now  as  his  own  mother  is  dead  and  she  was  a  great  friend  of  mine  although 
we  could  not  understand  each  other's  language  sometimes,  still  we  could 
make  it  out  with  sins  and  wonders." 


"April  7,  1894.  —  Since  I  last  wrote  on  this  book,  I  have  been  what 
people  call  cruising  about  here.  I  have  been  visiting  some  of  my  friends, 
though  scattered  far  apart,  with  my  snow-shoes  and  axe  on  my  shoulders. 
The  nearest  house  to  this  place  is  about  five  miles  up  a  beautiful  river, 
and  then  through  woods,  what  the  french  calls  a  portage  —  it  is  what  I 
call  pretty.  Many  is  the  time  that  I  have  been  going  with  dogs  and 
komatick  40  or  50  years  ago  with  my  husband  and  family  to  N.  W.  River, 
to  the  Hon.  Donald  A.  Smith  and  family  to  keep  N.  Year  or  Easter." 


"My  dear  old  sister  Hannah  Mishlin  who  is  now  going  on  for  80  years 
old  and  she  is  smart  yet,  she  hunts  fresh  meat  and  chops  holes  in  the  3  foot 
ice  this  very  winter  and  catches  trout  with  her  hook,  enough  for  her  house- 
hold, her  husband  not  able  to  work,  he  has  a  bad  complaint." 


"You  must  please  excuse  my  writing  and  spelling  for  I  have  never 
been  to  school,  neither  had  I  a  spelling  book  in  my  young  day  —  me  a 
native  of  this  country,  Labrador,  Hamilton's  Inlet,  Esquimaux  Bay  —  if 
you  wish  to  know  who  I  am,  I  am  old  Lydia  Campbell,  formerly  Lydia 
Brooks,  then  Blake,  after  Blake,  now  Campbell.  So  you  see  ups  and 
downs  has  been  my  life  all  through,  and  now  I  am  what  I  am  —  prais  the 
Lord." 

"I  have  been  hunting  most  every  day  since  Easter,  and  to  some 
of  my  rabbit  snares  and  still  traps,  cat  traps  and  mink  traps.  I  caught 
7  rabbits  and  i  marten  and  I  got  a  fix  and  4  partridges,  about  500 
trout  besides  household  duties  —  never  leave  out  morning  and  Evening 
prayers  and  cooking  and  baking  and  washing  for  5  people  —  3  motherless 
little  children  —  with  so  much  to  make  for  sale  out  of  seal  skin  and  deer 
skin  shoes,  bags  and  pouches  and  what  not.  .  .  .    You  can  say  well  done 


334  THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

old  half-breed  woman  in  Hamilton's  Inlet.    Good  night,  God  bless  us  all 
and  send  us  prosperity. 

"Yours  ever  true, 

"Lydia  Campbell." 


"We  are  going  to  have  an  evening  worship,  my  poor  old  man  is  tired, 
he  has  been  a  long  way  today  and  he  shot  2  beautyful  white  partridges. 
Our  boy  heer  shot  once  spruce  partridge." 


"Caplin  so  plentiful  boats  were  stopped,  whales,  walrusses  and  white 
bears." 


"Muligan  River,  May  24,  1894. — They  say  that  once  upon  a  time 
the  world  was  drowned  and  that  all  the  Esquimaux  were  drownded  but  one 
family  and  he  took  his  family  and  dogs  and  chattels  and  his  seal-skin  boat 
and  Kiak  and  Komaticks  and  went  on  the  highest  hill  that  they  could  see, 
and  stayed  there  till  the  rain  was  over  and  when  the  water  dried  up  they 
descended  down  the  river  and  got  down  to  the  plains  and  when  they  could 
not  see  any  more  people,  they  took  off  the  bottoms  of  their  boots  and  took 
some  little  white  [seal]  pups  and  sent  the  poor  little  things  off  to  sea  and  they 
drifted  to  some  islands  far  away  and  became  white  people.  Then  they 
done  the  same  as  the  others  did  and  the  people  spread  all  over  the  world. 
Such  was  my  poor  father's  thought.  .  .  .  There  is  up  the  main  river  a 
large  fall,  the  same  that  the  American  and  English  gentlemen  have  been 
up  to  see.  [Referring  to  Mr.  Bryant,  of  Philadelphia,  who  visited  Grand 
Falls.]  Well  there  is  a  large  whirlpool  or  hole  at  the  bottom  of  the  fall. 
The  Indians  that  frequent  the  place  say  that  there  is  three  women  — 
Indians  —  that  lives  under  that  place  or  near  to  it  I  am  told,  and  at  times 
they  can  hear  them  speaking  to  each  other  louder  than  the  roar  of  the  falls." 
[The  Indians  always  think  the  mist  of  a  waterfall  signifies  the  presence  of 
ghosts.] 

"I  have  been  the  cook  of  that  great  Sir  D.  D.  Smith  that  is  in  Canada 
at  this  time.  [In  the  days  when  Lord  Strathcona  was  chief  trader  at 
Hamilton  Inlet.]     He  was  then  at  Rigolet  Post,  a  chief  trader  only,  now 


APPENDIX  TO  PART  II  335 

what  is  he  so  great !  He  was  seen  last  winter  by  one  of  the  women  that 
belong  to  this  bay.  She  went  up  to  Canada.  .  .  and  he  is  gray  headed 
and  bended,  that  is  Sir  D.  D.  Smith." 


"August  I,  1894.  —  My  dear  friends,  you  will  please  excuse  my  writing 
and  spelling  —  the  paper  sweems  by  me,  my  eyesight  is  dim  now " 


A    NATIONAL   INSTITUTION 


FUNSTEN  BROS.   &  CO. 


International  Fur  Exchange,  Incorporated.  Public  Auction  Fur  Sales, 
St.  Louis,  U.  S.  A.,  will  offer  for  Sale  by  Public  Auction  through  the 
International  Fur  Exchange,  Second  and  Elm  Streets,  St.  Louis,  Mon- 
day, May  ioth,  1920,  and  Days  following  at  ten  o'clock,  forenoon, 
precisely  the  following  goods,  viz.  : 

Wednesday  —  May  I2th 
2,000  Bear 
2,675  Hair  Seal 
350  Mountain  Lion 
119  Leopard  and  Leopard  Cat 
4,600  Reindeer 
550,000  Opossum 
Thursday  —  May  ijth 

1,500  Silver  Fox 
Friday  —  May  14th 
16,500  Wildcat 
15,000  Lynx  Cat 
2,900  Lynx 
175,000  Raccoon 
Saturday  —  May  i^tk 
2,400  Viscacha 
10,000  Chinchilla  Rat 
2,400  Chinchilla 
180,000  Ermine,  White 
35,000  Ermine,  Grey 
80,000  Ermine,  Brown 
Monday  —  May  iph 
160,000  Mink 
336 


Monday  - 

—  May  loth 

Account  United  States  Gov't  — 

6,000 

Alaska  Seal 

Dressed,  dyed  and  machined 

Account 

Japanese  Government  — 

772 

Raw  Seal 

Account  Other  Shippers  — 

5,500 

Alaska  Seal 

Dressed,  dyed  and  machined 

568 

Broadtail 

17,000 

Persian  and  Schiras 

1,500 

Fisher 

14,000 

Marten 

6,000 

Stone  Marten 

2,500 

Baum  Marten 

Tuesday  - 

-  May  nth 

9,600  Badger 

28,000 

House  Cat 

180  Wolverine 

11,000 

White  Fox 

1,000 

Blue  Fox 

2,100 

Cross  Fox 

1,200,000 

Squirrel 

THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 


337 


Tuesday  —  May  i8th 
7,800  Russian  Sable 
37  Japanese  Sable 
7  Sea  Otter 
Wednesday  —  May  19th 

90,000  Red  Fox 
Thursday  —  May  20th 

400,000  Skunk 
Friday  —  May  21st 
157,000  Rabbits,  Dutch  and  Belgian 
190,000  lbs.  Australian  Rabbit 
145,000  lbs.  New  Zealand  Rabbit 

4,800  Otter 
150,000  Nutria 
1,300  Guanaco 
1,000  Pahmi 
10,500  Dressed  Lamb 
19,000  Dyed  Lamb  • 

25,000  Wombat 
15,000  Wallaby 
3,200  Kangaroo 
450,000  White  Hare 
Saturday  —  May  22nd 
550,000  Marmot 
65,000  Australian  Red  Fox 
7,000  Macedonian  Red  Fox 
1,475  Swift  Fox 
22,000  South  American  Fox 
Monday  —  May  24th 
800,000  Muskrat 
240,000  Muskrat,  Southern 
40,000  Muskrat,  Black 
60,000  Seal  Dyed  Muskrat 

500  Seal  Dyed  Muskrat  Plates 


Tuesday  —  May  25th 

150,000  Fitch 
2,250,000  Mole 

150,000  Kolinsky 
Wednesday  —  May  26th 

32,225  doz.  Coney,  Sealine, 
Near  Seal  and  Molina 
1,500  Sealine  Plates 
200  Near  Seal  Plates 
16,000  China  Mink 
80,000  Japanese  Mink 
10,000  Japanese  Fox 
7,000  Japanese  Marten 
10,000  Flying  Squirrel 
12,000  Goat  Rugs 
140,000  Dog  Mats 
3,400  Dog  Robes 
1,800  Thibet  Robes 
5,000  Thibet  Skins 
31,000  Barunduki 
6,700  White  Kid  Skins 

Sundries,  Dressed  and 
Dyed  Furs 
Thursday  —  May  2'jth 
16,000  Grey  Fox 
16,000  Ringtail  Cat 
175,000  Civet  Cat 
70,000  Wolf 
Friday  —  May  28th 
15,000  Pony 
150,000  Australian  Ringtail  Opossum 
150,000  Ringtail  Opossum 
21,000  Beaver 


Goods  on  show  on  and  after  May  3RD  at  Funsten  Bros.  &  Co.'s  Warehouses, 

St.  Louis. 
Prompt  Day  —  June  25TH 

GEORGE  B.  HERZIG  CO.,  Inc.,  Agents 
252-254  West  28th  Street,  New  York 


338 


THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 


LONDON  SPRING  PUBLIC  FUR  AUCTION  SALE  1920,  COMMENCING 
THURSDAY,  APRIL  22,   1920,   AND  FOLLOWING   DAYS 

Total  Quantities  to  be  Offered  by  the  Various  Brokers 


1, 100,000 

Skunk 

156,000 

Opossum,  Australian 

661,000 

Muskrat 

130,000 

Wallaby,  Australian 

1,034,000 

Opossum 

120,000 

Foxes,  Australian 

66,000 

Raccoon 

3,200 

Chinchilla 

99,000 

Civet  Cat 

20,500 

Nutria 

38,000 

Mink 

2,000 

Nutria,  sacs 

700 

Fox,  Silver 

3,200 

Moufflon 

1,500 

Fox,  Cross 

2,100 

Leopard 

110,000 

Fox,  Red 

2,200 

Kangaroo 

20,900 

Fox,  White 

5,800 

Kolinsky 

800 

Fox,  Blue 

39,500 

Fitch 

40,000 

Fox,  Grey 

2,000,000 

Mole 

65,000 

Fox,  Kitt 

SO 

Mole,  plates 

2,200 

Fox,  dyed 

80,000 

Marmot 

S.300 

Fox,  tails 

6,000 

Marmot,  dyed 

16,000 

Fox,  Japanese 

727,000 

Squirrel,  raw 

14,300 

Beaver 

26,000 

Squirrel,  backs  dyed 

S>400 

Otter 

16,000 

Squirrel,  skins  dyed 

700 

Lynx 

3,800 

Squirrel,  skins  dressed 

500 

Wolverine 

15,500 

Squirrel,  backs 

1,600 

Fisher 

1,500 

Squirrel,  sacs 

IS 

Sea  Otter 

3,500  1 

bs.  Squirrel,  tails 

200,000 

Ermine 

218,000 

Hare,  white 

2,000 

Sable 

12,500 

Hare,  dyed 

4,900 

Marten 

42,500 

Lamb 

1,900 

Marten,  Baum 

24,700 

Lamb,  Persian 

10,400 

Marten,  Stone 

150,000 

Lamb,  Thibet 

2,800 

Marten,  tails 

5,000 

Lamb,  Thibet,  Coats  &  Crosses 

6,300 

Bear 

18,000 

Lamb,  Slink 

80,000 

Wolf 

30,000 

Lamb,  Slink,  Crosses 

5>300 

Cat,  wild 

80,000 

Rabbit,  dressed 

44.S00 

Cat,  house 

600,000 

Rabbit,  raw 

i7»Soo 

Badger 

107,000 

Rabbit,  dyed 

400 

Fur  Seal,  dyed 

12,000 

Rabbit,  linings 

800 

Fur  Seal,  salted 

3,400 

Rabbit,  strips 

500 

Hair  Seal 

6,300 

Rabbit  Crosses 

i 


THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 


339 


146,000 

Goat 

7,400 

Hamster,  skins 

85,000 

Kid,  skins 

1,700 

Hamster,  sacs 

15,500 

Kid,  crosses 

S»700 

Kolinsky,  tails 

13,000 

Muskrat,  electric 

skins 

1,700 

Fitch,  tails 

2,500 

Muskrat,  electric 

strips 

6,400 

Guanaco 

3,300 

Flying  Squirrel 

500 

Monkey 

25,000 

Opossum,  dyed 

67 

Musk  Ox 

3,000 

Wolf,  dyed 

1,500 

Tiger 

6,000 

Wallaby,  dyed 

10,000 

Pahmi 

5,000 

Kolinsky,  dyed 

13,000 

Chinese  Raccoon 

500 

Otter,  dyed 

7,000 

Chinese  Badger 

1,800 

Broadtail,  dyed 

33,000 

Goat  Rugs 

30,100 

Ringtail 

8,300 

Dog  Mats  and  Robes 

62,000 

Fox,  South  American 

18,000 

Sheep 

11,600 

Ermine,  tails 

22,000 

Gazelle 

NEW  YORK'S  FUR  MARKET  REPORT 

For  the  Shipper  and  Dealer  in  Furs 


Monday  - 

-  April  iQth 

719 

Fisher 

3,844  Stone  Marten 

2,656 

Baum  Marten 

6,869  Marten 

783 

Cross  Fox 

3,084  White  Fox 

2,000 

White  Fox  Paws 

390 

Blue  Fox 

58,003 

Nutria 

Tuesday  - 

-  Jpril  20th 

14,086 

Sundry  Fox 

331 

Silver  Fox 

24,808 

Red  Fox 

1,613  Otter 

april  i4th,  1920 

The  New  York  Fur  Auction  Sales  Corporation 

Order  of  Sale 

Wednesday  —  April  2 1st 
Sundries 
19,320  Tails 
24,004  House  Cat 
1,957  Pony 
412  Leopard 
73,725  Ermine 
1,269  Chinchilla 
1,619  Russian  Sable 

3  Sea  Otter 
3,332  Ringtail  Cat 
245,648  Opossum 
Thursday  —  April  22nd 
1,942  Badger 
556  Lynx 


340 


THE   FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 


11,803  Wildcat 

14 

Grizzly  Bear 

1,211,692  Mole 

15 

Polar  Bear 

232,471  Muskrat,  Brown 

98,673 

Civet  Cat 

16,914  Muskrat,  Black 

24,081 

Kolinsky 

80,273  Muskrat,  Southern 

910 

Hair  Seal 

131,468  Ringtail  Opossum 

60,248 

Fitch 

12,147  Wallaby 

188,342 

Skunk 

Friday  —  April  2^rd 

Monday  - 

-  April  26th 

24,818  Wombat 

18,237 

Japanese  Mink 

946  Kangaroo 

97 

Japanese  Badger 

122,642  lbs.  Australian  and 

1,572 

Japanese  Marten 

New  Zealand  Rabbit 

4,997 

Japanese  Flying  Squirrel 

9,913  Rabbit 

71,843 

Mink 

9,667  White  Hares 

Tuesday  - 

-  April  2yth 

384,397  Squirrel 

29,683 

Australian  Fox 

24,234  Wolf 

5,982 

Grey  Fox 

204,528  Australian  Opossum 

1,582 

Persian  Lamb 

11,469  Tasmanian  Opossum 

12,788 

Chinese  Weasel 

Saturday  —  April  24.th 

2,945 

Chinese  Civet  Cat 

89  Wolverine 

180,109 

Marmot 

275  Black  Bear 

78,310 

Raccoon 

27  Brown  Bear 

9,902 

Beaver 

Sundries  consist  of  (239)  Bulgarian  Cat,  (197)  Hungarian  Cat,  (315)  Broadtail, 
(320)  Caracul,  (505)  Wallaroo,  (1933)  Chinchilla  Rats,  (80)  Paddy  Melon, 
(469)  Leopard  Cat,  (336)  Fawns,  (187)  Golyak,  (1215)  Mountain  Beaver, 
(2210)  Guanaco. 


New  York  Fur  Auction  Sales  Corporation 
48-50-52  Great  Jones  Street,  New  York. 


THE  FUR  TRADE  OF  AMERICA 

MONTREAL  MARCH  (1920)   FUR  SALES 


341 


Skin 


NUICBER 


Muskrat 

Wolf 

White  Fox      .... 

Fitch 

Fisher 

Lynx 

Silver  Fox      .... 
Cross  Fox       .... 

Mink 

Beaver  

Squirrel 

Marten 

Russian  Sable     .     .     . 
Stone  Marten      .     .     . 

Red  Fox    

Wombat 

Kangaroo 

Raccoon 

Moleskins       .... 
Persian  Lamb     .     .     . 

Musk  Ox 

Bear 

Buffalo  Hides  and  Robes 


243,040 

S.39S 

667 

5,000 

1,393 

686 

767 

404 

21,941 


3.400 

109 

275 

6,703 

4,253 

43,000 

248,728 

7,229 

28 

345 


Value 


51,057,104 

120,016 

41,083 

14,875 
206,467 

30,941 
241,614 

36,288 
427,599 
728,735 
134,338 


110,073 
60,720 

3,457 
7,234 


High 


$7.50 

45-25 

70.00 

3-30 

345.00 

62.50 

1225.00 

200.00 


201.00 

390.00 

32.50 

50.00 

2.50 

6.00 

30.00 


150.00 


Low 


3  .45 
5.00 

28.00 
2.05 

20.00 

15-25 
1.50 


18.00 
1 45 -00 

5.00 

1-45 

.80 

5.00 


65.00 


Average 

34-35 
22.24 

61-55 

2.97 

148.58 

45.10 
315.01 

89.00 

19.00 


-44 

8.40 

123.50 

21.00 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America. 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY,  LOS  ANGELES 

COLLEGE  LIBRARY 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


Oct  26  '60 


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Book  Slip-15TO-8,'58(5890s4)4280 


L  005  440 


270  6 


College 
Library 

HD 

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A2L3 


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III     III     I 

A    001  1 


il  III  I II  III  III  III 
51  275    3 


